Charles Baudelaire Quotes

The beautiful is always bizarre.

~ 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

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

Inspiration comes of working every day.

~ Charles Baudelaire

And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

~ Charles Baudelaire

L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu.

~ Charles Baudelaire

On peut chercher dans Dieu le complice et l'ami qui manquent toujours. Dieu est l'éternel confident dans cette tragédie dont chacun est le héros.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,that soft summer morninground a turning in the path,the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,its legs in the air like a woman in needburning its wedding poisonslike a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.I am the vampire of my own heart,one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughterwho can no longer smile.Am I dead?I must be dead.

~ Charles Baudelaire

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,That fair, sweet, summer morn!At a turn in the path a foul carcassOn a gravel strewn bed,Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,Burning and dripping with poisons,Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant wayIts belly, swollen with gases.

~ Charles Baudelaire

It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!The land rots; we shall sail into the night;if now the sky and sea are black as inkour hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.Only when we drink poison are we well —we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell,who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. (Le Voyage)

~ Charles Baudelaire

Always be a poet, even in prose.

~ 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

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.

~ Charles Baudelaire

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;But like an old sad faithful lecher, fainTo drink delight of that enormous trullWhose hellish beauty makes me young again.Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,Sodden with day, or, new appareled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,I love thee, infamous city! Harlots andHunted have pleasures of their own to give,The vulgar herd can never understand.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Il était tard; ainsi qu'une médaille neuveLa pleine lune s'étalait,Et la solennité de la nuit, comme un fleuveSur Paris dormant ruisselait.

~ 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

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

~ 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

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

~ 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

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

~ 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 sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

~ Charles Baudelaire

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.

~ Charles Baudelaire

How convenient it is to declare that everything is totally ugly within the habit of the époque, rather than applying oneself to extract from it the dark and cryptic beauty, however faint and invisible it is.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.

~ Charles Baudelaire

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

~ Charles Baudelaire

The Beautiful is always strange.

~ 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

Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Nature can counsel nothing but crime.

~ 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

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

I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, — Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away; Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street, Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.

~ 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

The mainspring of genius is curiosity.

~ Charles Baudelaire

The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Thanks be to God, Who gives us sufferingas sacred remedy for all our sins,that best and purest essence which preparesthe strong in spirit for divine delights!

~ Charles Baudelaire

The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.

~ Charles Baudelaire