Charles Baudelaire Quotes

Cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household.

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

Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

Man loves man so much that when he flees the city, it is still to seek the crowd, that is, to rebuild the city in the country.

In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its point of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.

What is it that brings on these moods of yours? Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.

On the vaporization and the centralization of the Self. All is there.

It is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.

It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance

In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is not nearly so large as people think.

Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Within the bottle's depths, the wine's soul sang one night. Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, words!

Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.

Being a useful man has always seemed to me to be something truly hideous.

We revel in the laxness of the path we take.

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always the product of skill.

We are all born marked for evil.

When it meows, one scarcely hears it... It has not the need of words to speak the lengthiest phraseologies.

Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans de go u" t. Lord! give me the strength and the courage To see my heart and my body without disgust.

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!

The immense profundity of thought in vulgar locutions, like holes dug by generations of ants.

All the visible universe is nothing but a shop of images and signs.

The true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling . . . and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'.

I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon, In which long worms crawl like remorse.

In my mind it strolls, as well as in my apartment. A cat, strong, sweet and delightful.

My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.

A child sees everything in a sense of newness - he is always drunk. Genius is nothing but childhood re-attained at will.

In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one's eyes. It becomes its symbol.

Il faut e pater le bourgeois. One must astound the bourgeois.

There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.

Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.

I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?

the Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love

What a mysterious faculty is that queen of the faculties!

Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.

You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.

A study of the Great Malady; horror of home.

And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.

Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.