Charles Baudelaire Quotes

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

Always be drunk ... Get drunk militantly. Just get drunk.

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.

A study of the Great Malady; horror of home.

Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing.

A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.

The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.

We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.

It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.