Quotes from Charles Baudelaire

La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas." ( "The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist." )

The beautiful is always bizarre.

Remembering is only a new form of suffering.

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

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.

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.

I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.

Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.

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.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we're indifferent to whether we win or lose?

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass; And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass, I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight, And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.

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

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

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.

Today I felt pass over me a breath of wind from the wings of madness.