Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

About Charles Baudelaire:

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Charles Baudelaire

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

Charles Baudelaire

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

Charles Baudelaire

Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve

Charles Baudelaire

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

Charles Baudelaire

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones, its legs in the air like a woman in need burning its wedding poisons like a fountain with its rhyt...

Charles Baudelaire

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

Charles Baudelaire

Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit hap...

Charles Baudelaire

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.

Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk. That’s it! The great imperative! 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. And if you som...

Charles Baudelaire

To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.

Charles Baudelaire

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

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas. It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

Charles Baudelaire

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

Charles Baudelaire

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.

Charles Baudelaire

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.

Charles Baudelaire

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

Charles Baudelaire

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?

Charles Baudelaire

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

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

Charles Baudelaire

Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?

Charles Baudelaire

Author Bio

  • NameCharles Baudelaire
  • DescriptionFrench poet
  • AliasesBaudelaire; Charles Pierre Baudelaire
  • BornApril 9, 1821
  • DiedAugust 31, 1867
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPoet; Art Critic; Linguist; Essayist; Translator; Writer