Hypocrite reader — my likeness — my brother!
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil. 1857.
Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, Words!
Baudelaire, Charles. The Abyss. 1862.
Genius is nothing but youth recaptured.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Peintre de La Vie Moderne. 1863.
All beauties, like all possible phenomena, have something of the eternal and something of the ephemeral— of the absolute and the particular.
Baudelaire, Charles. Salon de 1846. 1846.
Nature is a temple where living columns Let slip from time to time uncertain words; Man finds his way through forests of symbols Which regard him with familiar gazes.
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil. 1857.
Alas, the vices of man, as horrifying as they are presumed to be, contain proof (if only in their infinite expansiveness!) of his bent for the infinite.
Baudelaire, Charles. Artificial Paradises. 1860.
We have psychologized like the insane, who aggravate their madness in struggling to understand it.
Baudelaire, Charles. La Fanfarlo. 1847.
Free man, you will always cherish the sea.
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil. 1957.
Soon we will plunge into the cold darkness; Farewell, vivid brightness of our too-short summers!
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil. 1957.
A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her lithe and flowing clothes, Sweet bath, suavely Scented with ointments, has acquired a delicacy of skin, a refinement of tone, a kind of androgyny without which the toughest and most virile of geniuses remains, when it comes to artistic perfection, an incomplete being.
Baudelaire, Charles. Artificial Paradises. 1860.
It is the hour when the swarm of malevolent dreams Makes sun-browned adolescents writhe upon their pillows.
Baudelaire, Charles. Flowers of Evil. 1957.
Perhaps it would be sweet to be, in turn, both victim and executioner.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
A woman is natural: that is to say, abominable.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. As it turns out, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
There are in every man, at all times, two simultaneous tendencies, one toward God, the other toward Satan.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter churches. What talk can they have with God?
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
Women do not know how to separate the soul from the body.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
One can only forget about time by making use of it.
Baudelaire, Charles. Mon Coeur Mis à Nu. 1864.
This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes so embarrassing that I suffered, upon losing it, a little less emotion than if I had mislaid, while out on a stroll, my calling-card.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
What good is it to accomplish projects, when the project itself is enjoyment enough?
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
What matters an eternity of damnation to someone who has found in one second the infinity of joy?
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
Which one of us has not dreamed, on ambitious days, of the miracle of a poetic prose: musical, without rhythm or rhyme; adaptable enough and discordant enough to conform to the lyrical movements of the soul, the waves of revery, the jolts of consciousness? Above all else, it is residence in the teeming cities, it is the crossroads of numberless relations that gives birth to this obsessional ideal.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.
Baudelaire, Charles. Le Spleen de Paris. 1862.
Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.
Baudelaire, Charles. Salon de 1845. 1845.
