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By far the worst pain
Is not to understand
Why without love or hate
My heart's full of pain.

— Paul Verlaine

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!

Original text (French)

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Love

More quotes by Paul Verlaine

What have you done, you standing there
In floods of tears?
Tell me what you have done
With your young life?

Falling tears in my heart,
Falling rain on the town.
Why this long ache,
A knife in my heart.

The long sobs of
The violins
Of autumn
Lay waste my heart
With monotones
Of boredom.

You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme…
And everything else is LIT-RIT-CHER.

Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884)

La lune blanche
Luit dans les bois;
De chaque branche
Part une voix
Sous la ramée.

All Paul Verlaine quotes →

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Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

Alexander Pope

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul Verlaine (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.