Charles Baudelaire Quotes - Page 7

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• Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Character, Portraits, Portraiture

  Charles Baudelaire, Jonathan Mayne (1981). “Art in Paris 1845-1862: salons and other exhibitions”

  11 Copy quote

• It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Art, Convince Us, Evil

  8 Copy quote

• For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Travel, Home, Independent

  "The Painter of Modern Life".

  65 Copy quote

• It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Men, Leisure

  54 Copy quote

• Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Solitude, Crowds, Poet

  10 Copy quote

• The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Heart, History, Towns

  4 Copy quote

• Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange, Vivre est un mal. Once our heart has been harvested once, Life becomes miserable.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Heart, Miserable, Has Beens

  7 Copy quote

• But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say: "Let's go!

  Charles Baudelaire

  Heart, Light, Knowing

  16 Copy quote

• Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Nature, Women, Natural

  Charles Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop (2006). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.21, Wesleyan University Press

  7 Copy quote

• Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Nature, Self, Voice

  Charles Baudelaire (1992). “Selected Writings on Art and Literature”, Penguin Classics

  18 Copy quote

• Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Spiritual, Art, Mean

  Charles Baudelaire (1919). “Baudelaire, His Prose and Poetry”

  6 Copy quote

• Go then, a starveling girl With no perfume or pearls, Only your nudity O my beauty!

  Charles Baudelaire

  Girl, Pearls, Nudity

  Charles Baudelaire (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.173, OUP Oxford

  6 Copy quote

• Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Wine, Drink, Virtue

  9 Copy quote

• Within the bottle's depths, the wine's soul sang one night. Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Wine, Night, Soul

  6 Copy quote

• I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Memories, Years, Thousand

  Charles Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop (2006). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.76, Wesleyan University Press

  18 Copy quote

• Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam, Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Cat, Eye, Dust

  Charles Baudelaire (1991). “The Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen: Poems”, Boa Editions

  20 Copy quote

• The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Infinity, Vices

  8 Copy quote

• The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Biographies, Appetite, Immense

  14 Copy quote

• Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, words!

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Desire, Action

  "Le Gouffre". Poem by Charles Baudelaire, 1862.

  6 Copy quote

• Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Heart, Agony, Depth

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.77, David R. Godine Publisher

  8 Copy quote

• To be a great man and a saint to oneself, that's the only important thing.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Important, Saint

  "The Essence of Laughter: And Other Essays, Journals, and Letters".

  4 Copy quote

• I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Rivers, Yellow, Blue

  9 Copy quote

• It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Beautiful, Mean, Despair

  Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

  12 Copy quote

• What is it that brings on these moods of yours?
  Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Pain, Ordinary, Alive

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.45, David R. Godine Publisher

  6 Copy quote

• It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Imperfect Things, Poetry

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

  7 Copy quote

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