Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

French poet

Lived from: 1821 - 1867

Category: Poets (Contemporary) Country: FlagFrance

Born: 9 april 1821 Died: 31 august 1867

  • The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of pasture which the imagination must digest and transform.
  • We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
  • There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

Quotes 1 till 20 of 45.

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  • 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.
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  • A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
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  • A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.
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  • All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.
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  • Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Any man who does not accept the conditions of human life sells his soul.
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  • Every idea is endowed of itself with immortal life, like a human being. All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter: molecules do not constitute form.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
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  • For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Hypocrite reader - my fellow - my brother!
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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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 me.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • Inspiration comes of working every day.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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  • It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
    ― Charles Baudelaire
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Questions and Answers

What are the most famous quotes from Charles Baudelaire?

The two most famous quotes from Charles Baudelaire are:

  • "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."
  • "A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else."

When did Charles Baudelaire live?

Charles Baudelaire was born in 1821 and died in the year 1867.