Quotes By Author: Charles Baudelaire
“Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,Your mother, your sister, or your brother?I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.Your friends?Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.Your country?I do not know in what latitude it lies.Beauty?I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal.Gold?I hate it as you hate God.Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger?I love the clouds the clouds that pass up thereUp there the wonderful clouds!”
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“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!”
“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!”
“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.”
“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.”
“I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.”
“If the word doesn’t exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn’t exist.”
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
“And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, “Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!”
“Inspiration comes of working every day.”
“Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?”
“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.”
“The beautiful is always bizarre.”