Charles Baudelaire Quotes - Page 2

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.

I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.

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

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.

Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers.

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.

La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."

("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")

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

The Beautiful is always strange.

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

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

Thanks be to God, Who gives us suffering
as sacred remedy for all our sins,
that best and purest essence which prepares
the strong in spirit for divine delights!

Music fathoms the sky.

Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again-lazy people.

A soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes such a nuisance, that the loss of it disturbed me less than if I had lost my visiting card while taking a walk.