La musique avant toute chose.

- Paul Verlaine

A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state by means of words.

- Paul Verlaine

A vast black sleep falls over my life sleep, all hope sleep, all desire.

- Paul Verlaine

I love this word decadence, all shimmering in purple and gold. It suggests the subtle thoughts of ultimate civilization, a high literary culture, a s…

- Paul Verlaine

The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, The meditation that is rather dream, With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; The hour of st…

- Paul Verlaine

Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust, Your childhood is a bower: Let my fingers wander in the moss Where glows the rosebud Let me among th…

- Paul Verlaine

I am the Empire at the end of the decadence.

- Paul Verlaine

Tears fall in my heart As tears fall on the town.

- Paul Verlaine

The poet is a madman lost in adventure.

- Paul Verlaine