Charles Baudelaire Quotes

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.

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

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.

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

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.

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

You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.