Charles Baudelaire Quotes

Ne cherchez plus mon coeur; les be" tes l'ont mange . Don't search any further for my heart; wild beasts ate it.

Comme l'imagination a cre e le monde, elle le gouverne. Because imagination created the world, it governs it.

The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.

Certes, je sortirai quant a' moi satisfait D'un monde o u' l'action n'est pas la soeur du re" ve. Indeed, for my part, I shall be happy to leave A world where action is not sister to the dream.

It is this admirable and immortal instinct for beauty which causes us to regard the earth and its spectacles as a glimpse, a correspondence of the beyond.

To be a great man and a saint to oneself, that's the only important thing.

Strangeness is an ingredient necessary in beauty.

If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally.

I lived for a long time under vast porticos That maritime suns tinted with a thousand fires, And whose great pillars, straight and majestuous In the evening made seem like basaltic caves.

La volupte unique et supre" me de l'amour g|"t dans la certitude de faire le mal. The unique, supreme pleasure of love consists in the certainty of doing evil.

If 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!

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.

Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.

And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.

La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Etre un homme utile m'a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux. To be useful has always seemed to me quite hideous.

In 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!

With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.

Je sais la douleur est la noblesse unique O u' ne mordront jamais la terre et les enfers. I know that pain is the one nobility upon which Hell itself cannot encroach.

Wine transforms moles into eagles.

By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

L'imagination est la reine du vrai, et le possible est une des provinces du vrai. Imagination is the queen of the truth and the possible is one of the provinces of the truth.

It is good sometimes that the happy of this world should learn, were it only to humble their foolish pride for an instant, that there are higher, wider, and rarer joys than theirs.

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.

Eternal superiority of the Dandy. What is the Dandy?

Where one should see only what is beautiful, our public looks only for what is true.

If 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.

J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans. IhavemorememoriesthanifIwereonethousandyearsold.

A Dandy does nothing.

On peut chercher dans Dieu le complice et l'ami qui manquent toujours. Dieu est l'éternel confident dans cette tragédie dont chacun est le héros.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.

If rape or arson, poison or the knifeHas wove no pleasing patterns in the stuffOf this drab canvas we accept as life -It is because we are not bold enough!

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.

Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.

The Beautiful is always strange.

Nature can counsel nothing but crime.

The mainspring of genius is curiosity.

The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear.

Thanks be to God, Who gives us sufferingas sacred remedy for all our sins, that best and purest essence which preparesthe strong in spirit for divine delights!

The saddest thing is that every love has an unhappy ending, and all the more unhappy in proportion to how divinely it began, with what wings it first took flight.

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requiresSisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is shortand Art is long.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.

Isn't it true that a pleasant house makes winter more poetic, and doesn't winter add to the poetry of a house?

Ant swarming CityCity full of dreamsWhere in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve

He who doesn't accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

Everything considered work is less boring than amusing oneself.

In putting off what one has to do one runs the risk of never being able to do it.