Charles Baudelaire Quotes - Page 14

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Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.

Charles Baudelaire

Stars, Eye, Heart

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Etre un homme utile m'a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux. To be useful has always seemed to me quite hideous.

Charles Baudelaire

Hideous

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You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.

Charles Baudelaire

Walks, Corpses

Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.29, David R. Godine Publisher

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France at the dinner table in faraway places; but here, among ourselves, in the family, let us face the facts: France is not poetic; to tell the truth, she even feels a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Charles Baudelaire

Use, France, Facts

"Baudelaire as a literary critic".

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Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

Charles Baudelaire

Dream, Ambition, Miracle

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In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!

Charles Baudelaire

Wine, Order, Drunk

Charles Baudelaire, “Get Drunk”

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My love, do you recall the object which we saw, That fair, sweet, summer morn! At a turn in the path a foul carcass On a gravel strewn bed, Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman, Burning and dripping with poisons, Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way Its belly, swollen with gases.

Charles Baudelaire

Summer, Sweet, Air

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Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.

Charles Baudelaire

Lying, Men, Vices

"Selected Letters of Charles Baudelaire: The Conquest of Solitude".

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It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.

Charles Baudelaire

Perfect, Would Be, Satanic

"Intimate Journals: Fusées". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1867.

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Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

Charles Baudelaire

Hands, Lines, Lasts

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Il faut travailler sinon par go u" t, au moins par de sespoir, puisque, tout bien ve rifie , travailler est moins ennuyeux que s'amuser. We should work: if not by preference, at least out of despair. All things considered, work is less boring than amusement.

Charles Baudelaire

Despair, Amusement, Boring

1887 Mon coeur mis a' nu, pt.18.

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If wine disappeared from human production, I believe there would be, in the health and intellect of the planet, a void, a deficiency far more terrible than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is made responsible. Is it not reasonable to suggest that people that never drink wine, whether naive or doctrinaire, are fools or hypocrites....?

Charles Baudelaire

Believe, Wine, Hypocrite

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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.

Charles Baudelaire

Eye, Cities, Monsters

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Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing.

Charles Baudelaire

Men, Confusing, Speech

Charles Baudelaire, James N McGowan (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.19, Oxford Paperbacks

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In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah.

Charles Baudelaire

Wise, Art, Prayer

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On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.

Charles Baudelaire

Writing, Proud, Pox

Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans. IhavemorememoriesthanifIwereonethousandyearsold.

Charles Baudelaire

Souvenirs, Plus

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The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.

Charles Baudelaire

Beauty, Time, Aquariums

Charles Baudelaire (1981). “Baudelaire: Selected Writings on Art and Artists”, p.391, CUP Archive

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Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.

Charles Baudelaire

Strong, Cat, Pride

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There is no dream of love, however ideal it may be, which does not end up with a fat, greedy baby hanging from the breast.

Charles Baudelaire

Dream, Baby, Doe

Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

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It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.

Charles Baudelaire

Regret, Men, Rights

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By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

Charles Baudelaire

Knowledge, Men, Primitive Man

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A Dandy does nothing.

Charles Baudelaire

Doe, Dandy, Idleness

Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present

Charles Baudelaire

Artist, Past, Historical Value

Charles Baudelaire (1995). “The Painters of Modern Life”, Phaidon Incorporated Limited

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If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

Charles Baudelaire

Photography, Art, Real

1859 'Salon of 1859', section 2, in Curiosites Esthetiques (1868).

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Born: April 9, 1821
Died: August 31, 1867
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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