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. - Charles Baudelaire
Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art. - Charles Baudelaire
The mainspring of genius is curiosity. - Charles Baudelaire
The world only goes round by misunderstanding. - Charles Baudelaire
The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear. - Charles Baudelaire
I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination. - Charles Baudelaire
Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose? - Charles Baudelaire
The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality. - Charles Baudelaire
To be away from home and yet find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world. - Charles Baudelaire
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams. - Charles Baudelaire
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose. - Charles Baudelaire
Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will. - Charles Baudelaire
Always be a poet, even in prose. - Charles Baudelaire
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. - Charles Baudelaire
He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window. - Charles Baudelaire
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree. - Charles Baudelaire
To fornicate is to aspire to enter into another; the artist never emerges from himself. - Charles Baudelaire
He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it! - Charles Baudelaire
Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty. - Charles Baudelaire
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances. - Charles Baudelaire
That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty. - Charles Baudelaire
I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge. - Charles Baudelaire
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. - Charles Baudelaire
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. - Charles Baudelaire
Inspiration comes of working every day. - Charles Baudelaire
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors. - Charles Baudelaire
To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity. - Charles Baudelaire
The beautiful is always bizarre. - Charles Baudelaire
Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not. - Charles Baudelaire
Music fathoms the sky. - Charles Baudelaire
If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist. - Charles Baudelaire
There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create. - Charles Baudelaire
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself. - Charles Baudelaire
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist. - Charles Baudelaire
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. - Charles Baudelaire
Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry. - Charles Baudelaire
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. - Charles Baudelaire
Every man who refuses to accept the conditions of life sells his soul. - Charles Baudelaire
And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful! - Charles Baudelaire
If rape or arson, poison or the knifeHas wove no pleasing patterns in the stuffOf this drab canvas we accept as life -It is because we are not bold enough! - Charles Baudelaire
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk. - Charles Baudelaire
The Beautiful is always strange. - Charles Baudelaire
Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry. - Charles Baudelaire
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place. - Charles Baudelaire