CHARLES BAUDELAIRE QUOTES
French poet (1821-1867)
Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes so embarrassing that I suffered, upon losing it, a little less emotion than if I had mislaid, while out on a stroll, my calling-card.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le Joueur généreux," Le Spleen de Paris
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
He who looks in through an open window never sees so many things as he who looks at a shut window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more gloomy, or more dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What we can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind the panes of a window. In that dark luminous hollow, life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Windows"
Superstition is the reservoir of all truths.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"The Albotross"
What is annoying in love, is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le Joueur généreux," Le Spleen de Paris
What matters an eternity of damnation to someone who has found in one second the infinity of joy?
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le Mauvais Vitrier"
There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Mon coeur mis à nu
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters.... But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Get Drunk"
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.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Crowds"
I am bored in France, especially as everyone resembles Voltaire.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"L'invitation au voyage"
When an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," L'art romantique
Everything, alas, is an abyss, -- actions, desires, dreams, words!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"The Abyss"
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.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
Happy is the man who can with vigorous wing
Mount to those luminous serene fields!
The man whose thoughts, like larks,
Take liberated flight toward the morning skies
--Who hovers over life and understands without effort
The language of flowers and voiceless things!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Elevation"
The world is composed of folks who can think only in common, in bands.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
God is the only being who need not even exist in order to reign.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Fusées