Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

"Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction."

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

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"For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation."

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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."

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"Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them."

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"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs."

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"Music fathoms the sky."

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"There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create."

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"Inspiration comes of working every day."

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"Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest."

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"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."

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"Always be a poet, even in prose."

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"It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish."

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"Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry."

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"It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish."

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"Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place."

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"There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened."

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