Charles Baudelaire quotes - page 6

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it. (Charles Baudelaire)
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
the Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
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. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
If a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it. (Charles Baudelaire)
Ant-swarming city, city abounding in dreams, Where ghosts in broad daylight accost the passerby! View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Nothing is as tedious as the limping days, When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate's immortal loom. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am? View quote
Charles Baudelaire
There, all is order and beauty only, Splendor, peace, and pleasure. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Alas, the vices of man, as horrifying as they are presumed to be, contain proof (if only in their infinite expansiveness!) of his bent for the infinite. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Soon we will plunge into the cold darkness; Farewell, vivid brightness of our too-short summers! View quote
Charles Baudelaire
I can scarcely conceive (would my brain be a spellbound mirror?) a type of beauty without unhappiness. Supported by - others would say, obsessed by - these notions, one may conceive it would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, - as rendered by Milton. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
We have psychologized like the insane, who aggravate their madness in struggling to understand it. View quote
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. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
The phrase "a literature of decadence" implies a scale of literature: infancy, childhood, adolescence, etc. This term, I would say, supposes something fateful and providential, like an inescapable decree; and it is completely unjust to reproach us for the fulfillment of a law that is mysterious. All I can understand of this academic saying is that it is shameful to obey this law pleasurably, and that we are guilty of rejoicing in our destiny. (Charles Baudelaire)
Women do not know how to separate the soul from the body. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
To be a serviceable man has always seemed to me something quite repulsive. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Perhaps it would be sweet to be, in turn, both victim and executioner. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
You gave me your mud and I have turned it to gold. View quote
Charles Baudelaire