“Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.”
Work
“A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.”
ArtAll Quotes by Charles Baudelaire
“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
Poetry“Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.”
Nature“What is art? Prostitution.”
Art“The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from those that could be found, and those who are impossible to find.”
Family“Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.”
Religion“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”
Dreams“It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.”
Beauty“There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.”
Respect“There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.”
Beauty“Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.”
Best“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.”
Men“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.”
Beauty“For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.”
Finance“The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.”
Beauty“Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.”
Art“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.”
Art“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.”
Nature“Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate good is always the product of an art.”
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.”
Music