Charles Baudelaire Quotes

I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans; I hate movement for it displaces lines, And never do I weep and never do I laugh.

Il n'est pas de plaisir plus doux que de surprendre un homme en lui donnant plus qu'il n'espère.

Genius is only childhood recovered at will, childhood now gifted to express itself with the faculties of manhood and with the analytic mind that allows him to give order to the heap of unwittingly hoarded material.

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.

C'est l'Ennui! — l'œil chargé d'un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d'échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, — Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!

These tall and handsome ships, swaying imperceptibly on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their inactive, nostalgic appearance, don't they say to us in a speechless tongue: When do we cast off for happiness?

the Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love

A tender heart unnerved by nothingness
hoards every fragment of the radiant past.

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.

— But why is she weeping? She, the perfect beauty, Who could put at her feet the conquered human race, What secret malady gnaws at those sturdy flanks? — She is weeping, fool, because she has lived! And because she lives! But what she deplores Most, what makes her shudder down to her knees, Is that tomorrow, alas! she will still have to live! Tomorrow, after tomorrow, always! — like us!

God is the only being who, in order to reign, need not even exist.

Dreams, always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate is the soul, the more its dreams bear it away from possibility. Each man carries in himself his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed. From birth to death, how many hours can we count that are filled by positive enjoyment, by successful and decisive action? Shall we ever live, shall we ever pass into this picture which my soul has painted, this picture which resembles you?

These treasures, this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miraculous flowers, they are you. Still you, these mighty rivers and these calm canals! These enormous ships that ride upon them, freighted with wealth, whence rise the monotonous songs of their handling: these are my thoughts that sleep or that roll upon your breast. You lead them softly towards that sea which is the Infinite; ever reflecting the depths of heaven in the limpidity of your fair soul; and when, tired by the ocean's swell and gorged with the treasures of the East, they return to their port of departure, these are still my thoughts enriched which return from the Infinite - towards you.

I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.<p>I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.

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.

Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.