Charles Baudelaire
There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.Collection: Art
These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.Collection: Believe
Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?Collection: Sight
The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).Collection: Heart
Our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze on its trivial image on a scrap of metal.Collection: Men
Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.Collection: Dance
For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.Collection: Travel
Il faut e pater le bourgeois. One must astound the bourgeois.Collection: Bourgeois
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!Collection: Knives
I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.Collection: Bored
I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon, In which long worms crawl like remorse.Collection: Moon
When a singer puts his hand on his heart, it means usually, I will always love you!Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Crush
Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.Collection: Latin
As for techniques and processes, as seen in the works themselves, neither public nor artists will find anything about them here. Those things are learned in the studio and the public is interested only in the results.Collection: Artist
In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Dream
Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive.Collection: Dream
Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.Collection: Dance
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.Collection: Art
The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.Collection: Time
To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.Collection: Home
In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.Collection: Ancient
With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.Collection: Wine
Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.Collection: Wine
There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.Collection: God
Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.Collection: Time
Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject, nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.Collection: Choices
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.Collection: Drunk
Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.Collection: Solitude
Strangeness is an ingredient necessary in beauty.Collection: Ingredients
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.Collection: Love
There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.Collection: Warrior
Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.Collection: Character
A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.Collection: Men
However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.Collection: Unity
The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.Collection: Men
I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.Collection: Gambling
That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.Collection: Mediocrity
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.Collection: Eye
Being a useful man has always seemed to me to be something truly hideous.Collection: Men
Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.Collection: Voyages
Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.Collection: Passion
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.Collection: Unique
Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.Collection: Love
And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.Collection: Fate
Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.Collection: Men
To glorify the cult of images (my great, my only, my earliest passion).Collection: Passion