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Charles Baudelaire Quotes - Page 13

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Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls,

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

Charles Baudelaire
Spring, Ambition, Cities
Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.30

What a mysterious faculty is that queen of the faculties!

Charles Baudelaire
Queens, Imagination, Mysterious

That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.

Charles Baudelaire
Mediocrity, Reign, Becoming

In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one's eyes. It becomes its symbol.

Charles Baudelaire
Eye, Soul, Perception

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.

Charles Baudelaire
Archer, Clouds, Wings
Charles Baudelaire (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.17, OUP Oxford

I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?

Charles Baudelaire
Seeds, Knows
Robert Lowell, Charles Baudelaire (1968). “The Voyage: And Other Versions of Poems”

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

Charles Baudelaire
Moving, Hands, Devil
Charles Baudelaire (2015). “Poems”, p.12, Everyman's Library

Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.

Charles Baudelaire
Voyages, Bitter, Tire

But a dandy can never be a vulgar man

Charles Baudelaire
Men, Vulgar, Dandy
Charles Baudelaire (1972). “Selected writings on art and artists [of] Beaudelaire”, Penguin Books

La volupte unique et supre" me de l'amour g|"t dans la certitude de faire le mal. The unique, supreme pleasure of love consists in the certainty of doing evil.

Charles Baudelaire
Unique, Evil, Pleasure

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.

Charles Baudelaire
Passion, Determined
"'L'Oeuvre et la vie d'Eugène Delacroix' ('The Life and Work of Eugène Delacroix')". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1863.

I lived for a long time under vast porticos That maritime suns tinted with a thousand fires, And whose great pillars, straight and majestuous In the evening made seem like basaltic caves.

Charles Baudelaire
Fire, Long, Pillars

And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.

Charles Baudelaire
Fate, Years, Lament
Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.72, David R. Godine Publisher

A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.

Charles Baudelaire
Fire, People, Dreamer

To glorify the cult of images (my great, my only, my earliest passion).

Charles Baudelaire
Passion, Worship, Primitive
"Journaux intimes". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1887.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

Charles Baudelaire
Two, Quality, Fundamentals
Charles Baudelaire, Keith Waldrop (2006). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.26, Wesleyan University Press

Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage.

Charles Baudelaire
Love, Creating, Church
"Intimate journals: Mon cœur mis à nu". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1864.

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

Charles Baudelaire
Art, Results, Identical

Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.

Charles Baudelaire
Men, Vices, Taste
Charles Baudelaire (1926). “Baudelaire, Prose and Poetry”

We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.

Charles Baudelaire
Government, Veins, Syphilis

La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Charles Baudelaire
Grace, Pleasure, Richness

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

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

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

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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