“I used to walk by the river
An old book under my arm
The river is the same as pain
It elapses mindlessly
And when will the week be over”

— Guillaume Apollinaire, book Alcools

Je passais au bord de la Seine
Un livre ancien sous le bras
Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine
Il s'écoule et ne tarit pas
Quand donc finira la semaine
"Marie", line 21; translation from Donald Revell (trans.) Alcools (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1995) p. 75.
Alcools (1912)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I used to walk by the river An old book under my arm The river is the same as pain It elapses mindlessly And when w…" by Guillaume Apollinaire?

Guillaume Apollinaire28

French poet 1880–1918

Related quotes

“Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Last words (May 10, 1863); as quoted in "Stonewall Jackson's Last Days" by Joe D. Haines, Jr. in America's Civil War

“If my critics saw me walking over the River Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Attributed to her in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3637706/Quite-Interesting.html and other sources. Actually an adapted Lyndon Johnson quote "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'" <br class="br">Misattributed

“There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) Russian poet and writer

Есть книги настолько живые, но все боишься, что, пока не читал, она уже изменилась, как река — сменилась, пока жил — тоже жила, как река — шла и ушла. Никто дважды не вступал в ту же реку. А вступал ли кто дважды в ту же книгу?
Pushkin and Pugachev (1937)