Charles Baudelaire

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.
Charles Baudelaire

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
Charles Baudelaire

Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
Charles Baudelaire

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.
Charles Baudelaire

Nature… is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
Charles Baudelaire

God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn’t even need to exist.
Charles Baudelaire

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.
Charles Baudelaire

Nothing can be done except little by little.
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.
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

Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.
Charles Baudelaire

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
Charles Baudelaire

Music fathoms the sky.
Charles Baudelaire

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.
Charles Baudelaire

We are all born marked for evil.
Charles Baudelaire

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself.
Charles Baudelaire

But a dandy can never be a vulgar man.
Charles Baudelaire

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
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

Even if it were proven that God didn’t exist, Religion would still be Saintly and Divine.
Charles Baudelaire

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?
Charles Baudelaire

Progress, this great heresy of decay.
Charles Baudelaire

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
Charles Baudelaire

The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.
Charles Baudelaire

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.
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

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
Charles Baudelaire

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
Charles Baudelaire

Genius is childhood recalled at will.
Charles Baudelaire

Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!
Charles Baudelaire

I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
Charles Baudelaire

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.
Charles Baudelaire