Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

41 quotes

Charles Baudelaire is a French poet and critic whose words have traveled far beyond their original audience. The range of their thinking — from Art to Beauty — speaks to an intellectual restlessness that shows in every quote. With 53 quotes in our library, Charles Baudelaire is among the most well-represented voices here, with thoughts on Art, Beauty, Poetry, Nature, and Women. Perhaps their most recognizable line: "Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate good is always the product of an art."

“What is art? Prostitution.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

All Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

“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

Men

“France is not poetic she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Poetry

“Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Beauty

“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.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Poetry

“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Beauty

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

— Charles Baudelaire

Respect

“Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

“It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Beauty

“Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!”

— Charles Baudelaire

Beauty

“Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?”

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

“Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate good is always the product of an art.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

“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.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Music

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

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

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

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

“Even if it were proven that God didn't exist, Religion would still be Saintly and Divine.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Religion

“A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Art

“For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Finance

“Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Work

“This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.”

— Charles Baudelaire

Change

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

— Charles Baudelaire

Beauty