Quotes from Charles Baudelaire

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.

Time is an avid gambler who has no need to cheat to win every time.

Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain he would get well if he were by the window.

The man who says his prayers in the evening is a captain posting his sentries. After that, he can sleep.

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.

Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.

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

I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.

Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.

We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.

There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.

Love is the natural occupation of the man of leisure.

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.

But a dandy can never be a vulgar man

Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.

The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.

It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.

The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors, so much money bestowed on men without souls and without education.