Quotes from Charles Baudelaire

Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.

Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.

Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.

As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work

The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

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

The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.

What is art? Prostitution.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.

Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.

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.

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

The Beautiful is always strange.

Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.