Quotes by Charles Baudelaire
Always be a poet, even in prose.
I 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.
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Nothing can be done except little by little.
The world only goes round by misunderstanding.
Inspiration comes of working every day.
Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.
A breath of wind from the wings of madness.
There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
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.
There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.
