Top 300 Charles Baudelaire Quotes (2023 Update)
Page 3 of 7

101. “Perfumes, colours and sounds echo one another.”

— Charles Baudelaire

102. “Dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music.”

— Charles Baudelaire

103. “Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.”

— Charles Baudelaire

104. “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

105. “Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers.”

— Charles Baudelaire

106. “Any healthy man can go without food for two days – but not without poetry.”

— Charles Baudelaire

107. “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!”

— Charles Baudelaire

108. “One man illumines you with his other sets in you his sorrow.”

— Charles Baudelaire

109. “In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.”

— Charles Baudelaire

110. “There are some temptations which are so strong that they must be virtues.”

— Charles Baudelaire

111. “But a dandy can never be a vulgar man.”

— Charles Baudelaire

112. “In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.”

— Charles Baudelaire

113. “L’art est long, et le temps est court.”

— Charles Baudelaire

114. “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

115. “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

116. “I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.”

— Charles Baudelaire

117. “What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.”

— Charles Baudelaire

118. “I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.”

— Charles Baudelaire

119. “Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.”

— Charles Baudelaire

120. “My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!”

— Charles Baudelaire

121. “The poet is like the prince of clouds Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking.”

— Charles Baudelaire

122. “There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.”

— Charles Baudelaire

123. “Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even – all must combine to realize a character.”

— Charles Baudelaire

124. “There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent.”

— Charles Baudelaire

125. “The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.”

— Charles Baudelaire

126. “Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.”

— Charles Baudelaire

127. “If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether, thanks to the stupidity of the multitude which is its natural ally.”

— Charles Baudelaire

128. “To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.”

— Charles Baudelaire

129. “It is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.”

— Charles Baudelaire

130. “Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, and all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.”

— Charles Baudelaire

131. “A silent mouth is sweet to hear.”

— Charles Baudelaire

132. “True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.”

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire

134. “To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world – impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.”

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire

136. “Amer savoir, celui qu’on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.”

— Charles Baudelaire

137. “Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.”

— Charles Baudelaire

138. “It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats. A cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury, cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures.”

— Charles Baudelaire

139. “Do you come from Heaven or rise from the abyss, Beauty?”

— Charles Baudelaire

140. “Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.”

— Charles Baudelaire

141. “Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.”

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire

143. “Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it.”

— Charles Baudelaire

144. “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

145. “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.”

— Charles Baudelaire

146. “It’s the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance.”

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire

148. “Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t’embrasser neuf fois.”

— Charles Baudelaire

149. “Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.”

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire