Charles Baudelaire
88 quotes
Biography
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet, essayist, translator and art critic. His poems are described as exhibiting mastery of rhythm and rhyme, containing an exoticism inherited from the Romantics, and are based on observations of real life.
"Always be a poet, even in prose."
"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."
"Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected."
"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."
"The beautiful is always bizarre."
"If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist."
"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."
"Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable."
"Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?"
"I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge."
"Inspiration comes of working every day."
"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."
"And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!"
"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."
"L'étude du beau est un duel où l'artiste crie de frayeur avant d'être vaincu."
"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."
"Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it."
"Tout ce qui plaît a une raison de plaire, et mépriser les attroupements de ceux qui s'égarent n'est pas le moyen de les ramener où ils devraient être."
"Toutes les beautés contiennent, comme tous les phénomènes possibles, quelque chose d'éternel et quelque chose de transitoire — d'absolu et de particulier."
"Nous avons psychologisé comme les fous, qui augmentent leur folie en s’efforçant de la comprendre."
"La danse peut révéler tout ce que la musique recèle de mystérieux, et elle a de plus le mérite d'être humaine et palpable. La danse, c'est la poésie avec des bras et des jambs, ..."
"Tu m’as donné ta boue et j’en ai fait de l’or."
"Delacroix était passionnément amoureux de la passion, et froidement déterminé à chercher les moyens d'exprimer la passion de la manière la plus visible. Dans ce double caractère, nous trouvons, disons-le en passant, les deux signes qui marquent les plus solides génies, génies extrêmes."
"Le génie n'est que l'enfance retrouvée à volonté."
"Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!"