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Charles Baudelaire Quotes - Page 7

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I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over

I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.

Charles Baudelaire
War, Wind, Wings

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

Charles Baudelaire
Objectivity, Literature, Moral

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Charles Baudelaire
Inspirational, Dance, Dancing
Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

Charles Baudelaire
Confused, Men, Temples

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.

Charles Baudelaire
Art, Elements, Half

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

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.

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

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

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

The dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.

Charles Baudelaire
Sleep, Mirrors, Sublime

In philosophical inquiry, the human spirit, imitating the movement of the stars, must follow a curve which brings it back to its point of departure. To conclude is to close a circle.

Charles Baudelaire
Stars, Philosophical, Thinking

The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness.

Charles Baudelaire
Funny, Happiness, War

Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. They do everything in their power not to have any. And therefore, the great man, in order to exist, must possess a force of attack which is greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of people.

Charles Baudelaire
Men, Greatness, Order

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

Charles Baudelaire
Biographies, Appetite, Immense

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

Charles Baudelaire
Men, Hands, Honor

From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily.

Charles Baudelaire
Sweet, Eye, Cat
Charles Baudelaire, James N McGowan (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.105, Oxford Paperbacks

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

Charles Baudelaire
Pleasure

The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.

Charles Baudelaire
Beautiful, Running, Adventure
Charles Baudelaire, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden (2006). “Intimate Journals”, p.57, Courier Corporation

What I have always found most beautiful in the theatre, in my childhood, and still today, is lustre--a beautiful object, luminous, crystalline, complex, circular, symmetrical. However, I do not absolutely deny the value of dramatic literature. Only, I should like the actors to be mounted on high pattens, to wear masks more expressive than the human face, and to speak through megaphones.

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

Where are the dogs going? you people who pay so little attention ask. They are going about their business. And they are very punctilious, without wallets, notes, and without briefcases.

Charles Baudelaire
Funny, Dog, People

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always the product of skill.

Charles Baudelaire
Art, Destiny, Evil
"Le peintre de la vie moderne". Book by Charles Baudelaire. Chapter 11, 1863.

It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.

Charles Baudelaire
Beauty, Art, Joy

In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.

Charles Baudelaire
Art, Men, Order

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

The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.

Charles Baudelaire
Love, Acts Of Love, Torture
"Intimate Journals: Fusées". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1867.

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