Quotes from Charles Baudelaire

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!

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.

Nothing can be done except little by little.

Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.

Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!

To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.

An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.

There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.

So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.

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.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

I lived for a long time under vast porticos That maritime suns tinted with a thousand fires, And whose great pillars, straight and majestuous In the evening made seem like basaltic caves.

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!

Beware of all the paradoxical in love. It is simplicity which saves, it is simplicity which brings happiness...Love should be love.

What is love? The need of coming out of one's self.

When a singer puts his hand on his heart, it means usually, I will always love you!

A precious liquid, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias - because it is made from our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love - we must be stingy with it.

I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.

Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.

There is no dream of love, however ideal it may be, which does not end up with a fat, greedy baby hanging from the breast.