Charles Baudelaire Quotes

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

Certainly this man, such as I have described him, this loner who is gifted with an active imagination, traversing forever the vast desert of men, has a loftier aim than that of a simple idler, an aim more general than the passing pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for what one might be allowed to call modernity; for no better word presents itself to express the idea in question. What concerns him is to release the poetry of fashion from its historical trappings, to draw the eternal out of the transient.

Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu'importe? / Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du NOUVEAU! (rough translation : Into the abyss — Heaven or Hell, what difference does it make? / To the depths of the Unknown to find the NEW!)

Almost all our evils arise from being unable to stay in our rooms,” said another sage, Pascal.

(“Yanılmıyorsam Pascal, ‘neredeyse tüm mutsuzluklarımız odamızda kalmayı bilememiş olmamızdan geliyor başımıza’ der”)

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

The observer is a prince who enjoys his incognito everywhere. The lover of life makes the world his family, just as the lover of the fair sex devises his family from all discovered, discoverable and undiscoverable beauties; as the lover of pictures lives in an enchanted society of painted dreams on canvas.

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?

When I was young I lived a constant storm,
Though now and then the brilliant suns shot through,
So in my garden few red fruits were born,
The rain and thunder had so much to do.

- The Enemy

شعور بالوحدة ، منذ مولدي. برغم الأسرة ، ووسط الزملاء، على وجه الخصوص ، - شعور المقدر له ان يكون وحيدا إلى الابد.
مع ذلك، نزوع شديد الحيوية للحياة والمتعة

One night, the soul of wine was singing in the flask:
"O man, dear disinherited! to you I sing
This song full of light and of brotherhood
From my prison of glass with its scarlet wax seals."

Charles Baudelaire: Get Drunk
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.

But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.

And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'
— Charles Baudelaire, tr. Michael Hamburger

The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.

Oh pain! Oh pain! Time eats life.

C'est l'imagination qui a enseigné à l'homme le sens moral de la couleur, du contour, du son et du parfum. Elle a créé, au commencement du monde, l'analogie et la métaphore. Elle décompose toute la création, et, avec les matériaux amassés et disposés suivant des règles dont on ne peut trouver l'origine que dans le plus profond de l'âme, elle crée un monde nouveau, elle produit la sensation du neuf. Comme elle a créé le monde (on peut bien dire cela, je crois, même dans un sens religieux), il est juste qu'elle le gouverne.

The night solidified into a wall,
and my eyes had to guess where yours would be
as I drank in your breath: nectar! venom!
and your feet lay still in my harmless hands:
the night solidified into a wall.