Why Baudelaire quotes?
Charles Baudelaire was a popular French poet born on April 9, 1821. Apart from being an exceptional 19th-century poet, Baudelaire was a notable essayist and art critic.
Many of his works are inspired by his observations on nature, real life, and human behavior. Charles Baudelaire was also influenced by the age of Romanticism, evident in the extravagant representation of his themes.
Marshall Berman, an American philosopher and Marxist humanist writer, credited Baudelaire as the first modernist. His style of prose poetry continues to influence several poets from around the world.
Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé are some of them. If you enjoy French poetry and want to delve into this literary genius's mind, check out the collection of Charles Baudelaire quotes in this article.
What parents should know
- Baudelaire was a pioneer in managing rhymes and rhythm in his poems and was an expert in being economical with the use of words.
- 'Les Fleurs Du Mal' is a French poetry book with almost the entire collection of poems written by Charles Baudelaire. It was first published in 1857.
- Baudelaire's father passed away when he was six, leaving him a grand inheritance. Baudelaire grew up with lavish tastes and became a spendthrift.
What to discuss with kids
- Being credited as a modernist, Charles Baudelaire presented ideas and perspectives far ahead of his time.
- He wrote poems and prose that created a vivid scenery of the horrors and beauty of nature.
- In June 1841, Baudelaire's family sent him on a voyage, but he got off the ship and returned to Paris in February of the following year.
Short Quotes By Charles Baudelaire
1. "My soul remains mute."
2. "I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed."
3. "There are some temptations which are so strong that they must be virtues."
4. "If the word doesn't exist, invent it, but first, be sure it doesn't exist."
5. "A multitude of small delights constitute happiness."
6. "In our corruption, we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times."
7. "The Beautiful is always strange."
8. "Always be a poet, even in prose."
9. "For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation."
10. "Not a word. - Is my soul dead?"
11. "All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation."
12. "Inspiration comes of working every day."
13. "Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty."
14. "Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry."
15. "Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals."
16. "Nothing can be done except little by little."
17. "I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy."
18. "Extract the eternal from the ephemeral."
19. "Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose."
20. "I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror."
21. "The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."
22. "Where ever I am not is the place where I am myself."
23. "I set out to discover the why of it and to transform my pleasure into knowledge."
24. "Even when she walks, one would believe that she dances."
25. "You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed."
26. "One can only forget about time by making use of it."
27. "What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense."
28. "God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist."
29. "Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste."
30. "Music fathoms the sky."
31. "In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it."
32. "I have felt the wind on the wing of madness."
33. "Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently."
34. "An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom."
35. "The lover of life makes the whole world his family,"
36. "Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art."
37. "There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for."
38. "Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!"
39. "We revel in the laxness of the path we take."
Charles Baudelaire Quotes From Les Fleurs Du Mal
40. "For that crown will be made of nothing but pure light
Draw from the holy sources of primal rays'
Whereof our mortal eyes, in their fullest brightness,
Are no more than tarnished, mournful mirrors!" - 'Benediction', translated by William Aggeler, 1954
41. "Through the Unknown, we'll find the New." - 'The Flowers Of Evil'
42. "Of laughter bathed in tears that no man ever sees
To rouse the rabble herd to fits of obscene laughter?" - ‘The Venal Muse’, translated by Jacques LeClercq, 1958
43. "Charming in the dawn
There, the half-withdrawn
Drenched, mysterious sun appears
In the curdled skies,
Treacherous as your eyes
Shining from behind their tears." - 'Invitation To The Voyage', translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1936
44. "In the evening streamed down the radiant sun,
That great eye which stares from the inquisitive sky.
From behind the window that scattered its bright rays
It seemed to gaze upon our long, quiet dinners,
Spreading wide its candle-like reflections
On the frugal table-cloth and the serge curtains." - 'I Have Not Forgotten Our White Cottage', translated by William Aggeler, 1954
45. "Free man, you will always cherish the sea!
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul
In the infinite unrolling of its billows;
Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter." - 'Man And The Sea', translated by William Aggeler, 1954
46. "The tomb, confidant of my endless dreams, shall keep
Vigil through those long nights that know not sleep," - 'Posthumous Remorse', translated by Jacques LeCrelcq, 1958
47. "O lazy monk! When shall I learn to make
Of the living spectacle of my bleak misery
The labor of my hands and the love of my eyes? - 'The Bad Monk', translated by William Aggeler, 1954
48. "I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, —
Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away;
Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street,
Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed to meet." - 'The Sun', translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1936
49. "Our sins are obstinate, our repentance is faint;
We exact a high price for our confessions,
And we gaily return to the miry path,
Believing that base tears wash away all our stains." - 'To The Reader', translated by William Aggeler, 1954
Charles Baudelaire Quotes On Nature
50. "Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will."
51. "I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow, and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination."
52. "Nature…is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest." - 'Selected Writings On Art And Literature', 1992
53. "Even further from life, if that is possible: let's go live at the pole. There the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness suppresses variety and augments monotony, that half of nothingness." - 'Paris Spleen', 1869
54. "Artist should look at the reality and brutality of modern life in all its color, nature with all its imperfections -"
55. "Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each of which regards him as a kindred thing."
56. "Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little and that true reality is only in dreams."
57. "Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?" - 'Baudelaire: Selected Writings On Art And Artists', 1982
58. "Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air."
59. "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."
Charles Baudelaire Miscellenous Quotes
60. "To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who posses it, it runs a long risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress."
61. "A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company, by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."
62. "Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we're indifferent to whether we win or lose?"
63. "Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious."
64. "This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the
desire to change beds; one man would like to
suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would
recover his health beside the window." - 'Anywhere Out Of The World'
65. "What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts and ships anchored at the foot of houses?" - 'Paris Spleen', 1869
66. "Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire." - 'The Poems And Prose Poems Of Charles Baudelaire'
67. "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." - 'The Painter Of Modern Life', 1863
68. "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."
69. "He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window."
70. "At last, my soul explodes, and wisely cries out to me: "No matter where! No matter where! As long as it's out of the world!" - 'Anywhere Out Of The World'
71. "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." - 'The Painter Of Modern Life', 1863
72. "Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction."
73. "Does Batavia please you more, perhaps? There we would find, after all, the European spirit married to tropical beauty."
74. "To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery."
75. "To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art - that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts."
76. "No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare." - 'My Heart Laid Bare'
77. "It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered work is less boring than amusing oneself."
78. "I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust."
79. "As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life."
80. "The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality."
81. "Nothing is as tedious as the limping days, When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate's immortal loom."
82. "And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!" "
83. "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."
84. "I grew up in the shadow of a big bookcase: a tall
Babel, where verses, novels, histories, row upon row -
The immemorial ashes of Greek and Latin - all
Mingled and murmured." - 'The Voice' translated by George Dillon
85. "The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished."
86. "How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering." - 'La Fanfarlo'
87. "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."
88. "The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality."
89. "Woe betide the man who goes to antiquity for the study of anything other than ideal art, logic, and general method!" - 'The Painter Of Modern Life And Other Essays'
90. "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?"
91. "It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not." - 'Paris Spleen', 1869
92. "Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires Sisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short, and Art is long."
93. "I am but little disposed to put things in writing. One almost always regrets doing so."
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