Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. They do everything in their power not to have any. And therefore, the great man, in order to exist, must possess a force of attack which is greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of people.
Charles BaudelaireIf rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!
Charles BaudelaireIt is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.
Charles BaudelaireIf a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it.
Charles BaudelaireTo be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.
Charles BaudelaireSo as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.
Charles BaudelaireArtist should look at the reality and brutality of modern life in all its color, nature with all its imperfections - that should be the challenge to the modern painter not the didactic idealization of the past. The new generation should forge a new path.
Charles BaudelaireNature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
Charles BaudelaireSoon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, and all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.
Charles BaudelaireLa, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.
Charles BaudelaireHere comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.
Charles BaudelaireThere is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
Charles BaudelaireThe Poet is like the prince of the clouds, who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer. Exiled on the ground in the midst of the jeering crowd, his giant's wings keep him from walking.
Charles BaudelaireLove is a taste for prostitution. In fact, there is no noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to Prostitution.
Charles BaudelaireForest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.
Charles BaudelaireThere can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.
Charles BaudelaireAscend beyond the sickly atmosphere to a higher plane, and purify yourself by drinking as if it were ambrosia the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness. Free from the futile strivings and the cares which dim existence to a realm of mist, happy is he who wings an upward way on mighty pinions to the fields of light; whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked, outreaches life and readily comprehends the language of flowers and of all mute things.
Charles BaudelaireUnable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.
Charles BaudelaireAlas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.
Charles BaudelaireNothing is as tedious as the limping days, When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom
Charles BaudelaireAnybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself.
Charles BaudelaireThe immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.
Charles BaudelaireThere is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.
Charles BaudelaireI have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
Charles BaudelaireIt is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.
Charles BaudelaireIn order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!
Charles BaudelaireModernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.
Charles BaudelaireThe true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling . . . and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'.
Charles BaudelaireSince photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing.
Charles BaudelaireI love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
Charles BaudelaireThere are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.
Charles BaudelaireThis life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.
Charles Baudelaire