“Il faut, avec les mots de tout le monde, écrire comme personne.” — Paul-Jean Toulet | V2Melody

“Il faut, avec les mots de tout le monde, écrire comme personne.”

Expressing the ideal of making original art from ordinary language · Aphorism, commonly attributed to Paul-Jean Toulet

Art
Poetry

Paul-Jean Toulet

About Paul-Jean Toulet

Paul-Jean Toulet

5 June 1867–6 September 1920

Paul-Jean Toulet was born on 5 June 1867 in Pau, in the Béarn region of southwestern France, and died on 6 September 1920 at Guéthary, on the Basque coast. He occupies a singular place in French literature: neither wholly Symbolist nor conventionally modernist, neither simply a Decadent aesthete nor merely a regional…

More by Paul-Jean Toulet

Poems by Paul-Jean Toulet

The Cuckoo Sings Listen

More remarks by Paul-Jean Toulet

“Le bonheur est une petite chose que l'on grignote, assis par terre, au soleil.”

Presenting happiness as modest, tangible and quietly savoured · Prose aphorism, commonly attributed to Paul-Jean Toulet

Joy
Nature

“Il n'est de grand amour qu'à l'ombre d'un grand rêve.”

Linking enduring love with the imaginative life · Aphorism, commonly attributed to Paul-Jean Toulet

Hope
Love

“Rien n'est plus triste qu'un amour qui n'est pas partagé, sinon un amour qui l'est.”

Capturing the melancholy and vulnerability of emotional attachment · Aphorism, attributed to Paul-Jean Toulet

Despair
Love