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A Man Who From The Beginning Has Long Been Soaked In The Languid Atmosphere Of A Woman, The Scent Of Her Hands, Her Bosom, Her Knees, Her Hair, Her Lithe And Flowing Clothes, Sweet Bath, Suavely Scented With Ointments, Has Acquired A Delicacy Of Skin, A Refinement Of Tone, A Kind Of Androgyny Without Which The Toughest And Most Virile Of Geniuses Remains, When It Comes To Artistic Perfection, An Incomplete Being.

-Charles Baudelaire

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A Man Who From

Charles Baudelaire

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A Man Who From The Beginning Has Long Been Soaked In The Languid Atmosphere Of A Woman, The Scent Of Her Hands, Her Bosom, Her Knees, Her Hair, Her Lithe And Flowing Clothes, Sweet Bath, Suavely Scented With Ointments, Has Acquired A Delicacy Of Skin, A Refinement Of Tone, A Kind Of Androgyny Without Which The Toughest And Most Virile Of Geniuses Remains, When It Comes To Artistic Perfection, An Incomplete Being.

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Multitude, Solitude: Equal And Interchangeable Terms For The Active And Prolific Poet.

In Order For The Artist To Have A World To Express He Must First Be Situated In This World, Oppressed Or Oppressing, Resigned Or Rebellious, A Man Among Men.

What Could Be More Simple And More Complex, More Obvious And More Profound Than A Portrait.

If The Word Doesn't Exist, Invent It; But First Be Sure It Doesn't Exist.

Perfumes, Colours And Sounds Echo One Another.

It's The Devil Who Pulls The Strings That Make Us Dance

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.

How Bittersweet It Is, On Winter's Night, To Listen, By The Sputtering, Smoking Fire, As Distant Memories, Through The Fog-dimmed Light, Rise, To The Muffled Chime Of Churchbell Choir.

It Would Perhaps Be Nice To Be Alternately The Victim And The Executioner.

Common Sense Tells Us That The Things Of The Earth Exist Only A Little, And That True Reality Is Only In Dreams.

Comme L'imagination A Cre E Le Monde, Elle Le Gouverne. Because Imagination Created The World, It Governs It.

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

What I Have Always Found Most Beautiful In The Theatre, In My Childhood, And Still Today, Is Lustre--a Beautiful Object, Luminous, Crystalline, Complex, Circular, Symmetrical. However, I Do Not Absolutely Deny The Value Of Dramatic Literature. Only, I Should Like The Actors To Be Mounted On High Pattens, To Wear Masks More Expressive Than The Human Face, And To Speak Through Megaphones.

One Can Only Forget About Time By Making Use Of It.

The Immense Profundity Of Thought In Vulgar Locutions, Like Holes Dug By Generations Of Ants.

The Devil Pulls The Strings Which Make Us Dance; We Find Delight In The Most Loathsome Things; Some Furtherance Of Hell Each New Day Brings, And Yet We Feel No Horror In That Rank Advance.

But The True Voyagers Are Only Those Who Leave Just To Be Leaving; Hearts Light, Like Balloons, They Never Turn Aside From Their Fatality And Without Knowing Why They Always Say: "let's Go!

Theory Of The True Civilization. It Is Not To Be Found In Gas Or Steam Or Table Turning. It Consists In The Diminution Of The Traces Of Original Sin.

Who Among Us Has Not, In Moments Of Ambition, Dreamt Of The Miracle Of A Form Of Poetic Prose, Musical But Without Rhythm And Rhyme, Both Supple And Staccato Enough To Adapt Itself To The Lyrical Movements Of Our Souls, The Undulating Movements Of Our Reveries, And The Convulsive Movements Of Our Consciences? This Obsessive Ideal Springs Above All From Frequent Contact With Enormous Cities, From The Junction Of Their Innumerable Connections.

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.

In Art, There Is One Thing Which Does Not Receive Sufficient Attention. The Element Which Is Left To The Human Will Is Not Nearly So Large As People Think.

In Order Not To Feel Time's Horrid Fardel Bruise Your Shoulders, Grinding You Into The Earth, Get Drunk And Stay That Way. On What? On Wine, Poetry, Virtue, Whatever. But Get Drunk!

A Book Is A Garden, An Orchard, A Storehouse, A Party, A Company By The Way, A Counselor, A Multitude Of Counselors.

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.

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.

Beware Of All The Paradoxical In Love. It Is Simplicity Which Saves, It Is Simplicity Which Brings Happiness...love Should Be Love.

There Is No Sweeter Pleasure Than To Surprise A Man By Giving Him More Than He Hopes For.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

There Is No Dream Of Love, However Ideal It May Be, Which Does Not End Up With A Fat, Greedy Baby Hanging From The Breast.

Nature... Is Nothing But The Inner Voice Of Self-interest.

My Dear Brothers, Never Forget, When You Hear The Progress Of Enlightenment Vaunted, That The Devil's Best Trick Is To Persuade You That He Doesn't Exist!

Genius Is Nothing More Or Less Than Childhood Recovered By Will, A Childhood How Equipped For Self-expression With An Adult's Capacities.

I Think I Would Be Happy In That Place I Happen Not To Be, And This Question Of Moving House Is The Subject Of A Perpetual Dialogue I Have With My Soul.

Nature Is A Word, An Allegory, A Mold, An Embossing, If You Will.

Dancing Can Reveal All The Mystery That Music Conceals.

Unable To Suppress Love, The Church Wanted At Least To Disinfect It, And It Created Marriage.

The More Delicate And Ambitious The Soul, The Further Do Dreams Estrange It From Possible Things.

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

Alas, Human Vices, However Horrible One Might Imagine Them To Be, Contain The Proof (were It Only In Their Infinite Expansion) Of Man's Longing For The Infinite; But It Is A Longing That Often Takes The Wrong Route. It Is My Belief That The Reason Behind All Culpable Excesses Lies In This Depravation Of The Sense Of The Infinite.

It Is Good Sometimes That The Happy Of This World Should Learn, Were It Only To Humble Their Foolish Pride For An Instant, That There Are Higher, Wider, And Rarer Joys Than Theirs.

Go Then, A Starveling Girl With No Perfume Or Pearls, Only Your Nudity O My Beauty!

There Are Some Temptations Which Are So Strong That They Must Be Virtues.

From Satan Or From God, What Matter? Angel Or Siren, What Matter, If You Make - Fairy With Velvet Eyes, Rhythm, Perfume, Light, O My Only Queen - The Universe Less Hideous, Each Moment Less Strained?

Within The Bottle's Depths, The Wine's Soul Sang One Night. Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

For Me, Romanticism Is The Most Recent And The Most Current Expression Of Beauty.

A Book Is A Garden, A Party, A Company By The Way.

However Incoherent A Human Existence May Be, Human Unity Is Not Bothered By It.

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

To The Solemn Graves, Near A Lonely Cemetery, My Heart Like A Muffled Drum Is Beating Funeral Marches.

There Is No More Steely Barb Than That Of The Infinite.

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

To Glorify The Cult Of Images (my Great, My Only, My Earliest Passion).

When It Meows, One Scarcely Hears It... It Has Not The Need Of Words To Speak The Lengthiest Phraseologies.

If Photography Is Allowed To Supplement Art In Some Of Its Functions, It Will Soon Have Supplanted Or Corrupted It Altogether, Thanks To The Stupidity Of The Multitude Which Is Its Natural Ally.

Evil Is Committed Without Effort, Naturally, Fatally; Goodness Is Always The Product Of Some Art.

My Heart Is Lost; The Beasts Have Eaten It.

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.

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.

You Are Sitting And Smoking; You Believe That You Are Sitting In Your Pipe, And That Your Pipe Is Smoking You; You Are Exhaling Yourself In Bluish Clouds. You Feel Just Fine In This Position, And Only One Thing Gives You Worry Or Concern: How Will You Ever Be Able To Get Out Of Your Pipe?

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

And Over Your Unconsecrated Head You'll Hear The Howling Wolves Lament Their Fate And Yours The Livelong Year.

It Is This Admirable And Immortal Instinct For Beauty Which Causes Us To Regard The Earth And Its Spectacles As A Glimpse, A Correspondence Of The Beyond.

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

If A Given Combination Of Trees, Mountains, Water, And Houses, Say A Landscape, Is Beautiful, It Is Not So By Itself, But Because Of Me, Of My Favor, Of The Idea Or Feeling I Attach To It.

To Be A Great Man And A Saint To Oneself, That's The Only Important Thing.

A Precious Liquid, A Poison Dearer Than That Of The Borgias - Because It Is Made From Our Blood, Our Health, Our Sleep, And Two-thirds Of Our Love - We Must Be Stingy With It.

Color... Thinks By Itself, Independently Of The Object It Clothes.

Ne Cherchez Plus Mon Coeur; Les Be" Tes L'ont Mange . Don't Search Any Further For My Heart; Wild Beasts Ate It.

Everything That Gives Pleasure Has Its Reason. To Scorn The Mobs Of Those Who Go Astray Is Not The Means To Bring Them Around.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

Art Is An Infinitely Precious Good, A Draught Both Refreshing And Cheering Which Restores The Stomach And The Mind To The Natural Equilibrium Of The Ideal.

A Child Sees Everything In A Sense Of Newness - He Is Always Drunk. Genius Is Nothing But Childhood Re-attained At Will.

How Many Years Of Fatigue And Punishment It Takes To Learn The Simple Truth That Work, That Disagreeable Thing, Is The Only Way Of Not Suffering In Life, Or At All Events, Of Suffering Less.

My Soul Travels On The Smell Of Perfume Like The Souls Of Other Men On Music.

What Is Irritating About Love Is That It Is A Crime That Requires An Accomplice.

Pure Draughtsmen Are Philosophers And Dialecticians. Colourists Are Epic Poets.

Being A Useful Man Has Always Seemed To Me To Be Something Truly Hideous.

I Am The Vampire At My Own Veins.

Life Has But One True Charm: The Charm Of The Game. But What If We’re Indifferent To Whether We Win Or Lose?

I Throw Fresh Seeds Out. Who Knows What Survives?

Forest, I Fear You! In My Ruined Heart Your Roaring Wakens The Same Agony As In Cathedrals When The Organ Moans And From The Depths I Hear That I Am Damned.

In Philosophical Inquiry, The Human Spirit, Imitating The Movement Of The Stars, Must Follow A Curve Which Brings It Back To Its Point Of Departure. To Conclude Is To Close A Circle.

Who Would Dare Assign To Art The Sterile Function Of Imitating Nature?

Imitating Others

He Who Looks Through An Open Window Sees Fewer Things Than He Who Looks Through A Closed Window.

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.

We All Have The Republican Spirit In Our Veins, Like Syphilis In Our Bones. We Are Democratized And Venerealized.

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.

France At The Dinner Table In Faraway Places; But Here, Among Ourselves, In The Family, Let Us Face The Facts: France Is Not Poetic; To Tell The Truth, She Even Feels A Congenital Horror Of Poetry. Among The Writers Who Use Verse, Those Whom She Will Always Prefer Are The Most Prosaic.

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

In My Mind It Strolls, As Well As In My Apartment. A Cat, Strong, Sweet And Delightful.

Soon We Will Plunge Ourselves Into Cold Shadows, And All Of Summer's Stunning Afternoons Will Be Gone. I Already Hear The Dead Thuds Of Logs Below Falling On The Cobblestones And The Lawn.

Immediate Work, Even Poor, Is Worth More Than Dreams.

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

The True Voyagers Are Those Who Go For The Sake Of Traveling . . . And Without Quite Knowing Why, They Say, 'let Us Depart!'.

Certes, Je Sortirai Quant A' Moi Satisfait D'un Monde O U' L'action N'est Pas La Soeur Du Re" Ve. Indeed, For My Part, I Shall Be Happy To Leave A World Where Action Is Not Sister To The Dream.

I Have Cultivated My Hysteria With Pleasure And Terror.

There Is A Word, In A Verb, Something Sacred Which Forbids Us From Using It Recklessly. To Handle A Language Cunningly Is To Practice A Kind Of Evocative Sorcery.

One Should Always Be Drunk. That's All That Matters...but With What? With Wine, With Poetry, Or With Virtue, As You Chose. But Get Drunk.

How Little Remains Of The Man I Once Was, Save The Memory Of Him! But Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

Since Photography Gives Us Every Guarantee Of Exactitude That We Could Desire (they Really Believe That, The Mad Fools !), Then Photography And Art Are The Same Thing.

Unable To Do Away With Love, The Church Found A Way To Decontaminate It By Creating Marriage.

Music Fathoms The Sky.

Quand Me" Me Dieu N'existerait Pas, La Religion Serait Encore Sainte Et Divinedieu Est Le Seul E" Tre Qui, Pour Re Gner, N'ait Me" Me Pas Besoin D'exister. Even If God Did Not Exist, Religion Would Still Be Holyand Divine.god Isthe Only Being Who, Inorder Toreign, Need Not Even Exist.

That In All Times, Mediocrity Has Dominated, That Is Indubitable; But That It Reigns More Than Ever, That It Is Becoming Absolutely Triumphant And Inhibiting, This Is What Is As True As It Is Distressing.

La' , Tout N'est Qu'ordre Et Beaute , Luxe, Calme Et Volupte . There Where All Is Order And Beauty. Lush, Calm And Voluptuous.

Beauty Is The Sole Ambition, The Exclusive Goal Of Taste.

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

Imagination Is The Queen Of Truth, And Possibility Is One Of The Regions Of Truth. She Is Positively Akin To Infinity.

A Man Who From The Beginning Has Long Been Soaked In The Languid Atmosphere Of A Woman, The Scent Of Her Hands, Her Bosom, Her Knees, Her Hair, Her Lithe And Flowing Clothes, Sweet Bath, Suavely Scented With Ointments, Has Acquired A Delicacy Of Skin, A Refinement Of Tone, A Kind Of Androgyny Without Which The Toughest And Most Virile Of Geniuses Remains, When It Comes To Artistic Perfection, An Incomplete Being.

What Is Exhilarating In Bad Taste Is The Aristocratic Pleasure Of Giving Offense.

The Old Paris Is No More (the Form Of A City Changes Faster, Alas! Than A Mortal's Heart).

La Volupte Unique Et Supre" Me De L'amour G|"t Dans La Certitude De Faire Le Mal. The Unique, Supreme Pleasure Of Love Consists In The Certainty Of Doing Evil.

Ah! Seigneur! Donnez-moi La Force Et Le Courage De Contempler Mon Coeur Et Mon Corps Sans De Go U" T. Lord! Give Me The Strength And The Courage To See My Heart And My Body Without Disgust.

The Life Of Our City Is Rich In Poetic And Marvelous Subjects. We Are Enveloped And Steeped As Though In An Atmosphere Of The Marvelous; But We Do Not Notice It.

If Photography Is Allowed To Stand In For Art In Some Of Its Functions It Will Soon Supplant Or Corrupt It Completely Thanks To The Natural Support It Will Find In The Stupidity Of The Multitude. It Must Return To Its Real Task, Which Is To Be The Servant Of The Sciences And The Arts, But The Very Humble Servant, Like Printing And Shorthand Which Have Neither Created Nor Supplanted Literature.

Etre Un Homme Utile M'a Paru Toujours Quelque Chose De Bien Hideux. To Be Useful Has Always Seemed To Me Quite Hideous.

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

Je Sais La Douleur Est La Noblesse Unique O U' Ne Mordront Jamais La Terre Et Les Enfers. I Know That Pain Is The One Nobility Upon Which Hell Itself Cannot Encroach.

The Immense Appetite We Have For Biography Comes From A Deep-seated Sense Of Equality.

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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.

What Is It That Brings On These Moods Of Yours? Nothing Mysterious: The Ordinary Pain Of Being Alive.

Any Newspaper, From The First Line To The Last, Is Nothing But A Web Of Horrors, I Cannot Understand How An Innocent Hand Can Touch A Newspaper Without Convulsing In Disgust.

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

The Photographic Industry Was The Refuge Of All The Painters Who Couldn't Make It, Either Because They Had No Talent Or Because They Were Too Lazy To Finish Their Studies. Hence This Universal Infatuation Was Not Only Characterized By Blindness And Stupidity, But Also By Vindictiveness.

Torture, As The Art Of Discovering The Truth, Is Barbaric Nonsense; It Is The Application Of A Material Means To A Spiritual End.

The Devil's Finest Trick Is To Persuade You That He Does Not Exist.

There Is No Such Thing As A Long Piece Of Work, Except One That You Dare Not Start.

So As Not To Feel The Horrible Burden Of Time That Breaks Your Back And Bends You To The Earth, Be Endlessly Drunk.

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.

Imagination Is An Almost Divine Faculty Which, Without Recourse To Any Philosophical Method, Immediately Perceives Everything: The Secret And Intimate Connections Between Things, Correspondences And Analogies.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

Everything, Alas, Is An Abyss, Actions, Desires, Dreams, Words!

I Am The Wound And The Knife! I Am The Slap And The Cheek! I Am The Limbs And The Rack, And The Victim And The Executioner! I Am The Vampire Of My Own Heart.

True Civilization Does Not Lie In Gas, Nor In Steam, Nor In Turn-tables. It Lies In The Reduction Of The Traces Of Original Sin.

Nothing In A Portrait Is A Matter Of Indifference. Gesture, Grimace, Clothing, Decor Even - All Must Combine To Realize A Character.

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.

Do You Remember The Sight We Saw, My Soul, That Soft Summer Morning Round A Turning In The Path, The Disgusting Carcass On A Bed Scattered With Stones, Its Legs In The Air Like A Woman In Need Burning Its Wedding Poisons Like A Fountain With Its Rhythmic Sobs, I Could Hear It Clearly Flowing With A Long Murmuring Sound, But I Touch My Body In Vain To Find The Wound. I Am The Vampire Of My Own Heart, One Of The Great Outcasts Condemned To Eternal Laughter Who Can No Longer Smile. Am I Dead? I Must Be Dead.

Delacroix Was Passionately In Love With Passion, But Coldly Determined To Express Passion As Clearly As Possible.

There Can Be No Progress-real, Moral Prgress-except In The Individual And By The Individual Himself.

What Men Call Love Is A Very Small, Restricted, Feeble Thing Compared With This Ineffable Orgy, This Divine Prostitution Of The Soul Giving Itself Entire, All Its Poetry And All Its Charity, To The Unexpected As It Comes Along, To The Stranger As He Passes.

Good Sense Tells Us That Earthly Things Are Rare And Fleeting, And That True Reality Exists Only In Dreams. To Draw Sustenance From Happiness- Natural Or Artificial - You Must First Have The Courage To Swallow It; And Those Who Perhaps Most Merit Happiness Are Precisely Those On Whom Felicity, As Mortals Conceive It, Always Acts As A Vomitive.

It Is From The Womb Of Art That Criticism Was Born.

There Are But Three Beings Worthy Of Respect: The Priest, The Warrior And The Poet. To Know, To Kill And To Create. The Rest Of Mankind May Be Taxed And Drudged, They Are Born For The Stable, That Is To Say, To Practise What They Call Professions.

Alas! Man's Vices, Horrible As They Are Supposed To Be, Contain The Positive Proof Of His Taste For The Infinite.

The Insatiable Thirst For Everything That Lies Beyond, And That Life Reveals, Is The Most Living Proof Of Our Immortality.

Above My Cradle Loomed The Bookcase Where/ Latin Ashes And The Dust Of Greece/ Mingled With Novels, History, And Verse/ In One Dark Babel. I Was Folio-high/ When I First Heard The Voices.

To Dream Magnificently Is Not A Gift Given To All Men, And Even For Those Who Possess It, It Runs A Strong Risk Of Being Progressively Diminished By The Ever-growing Dissipation Of Modern Life And By The Restlessness Engendered By Material Progress. The Ability To Dream Is A Divine And Mysterious Ability; Because It Is Through Dreams That Man Communicates With The Shadowy World Which Surrounds Him. But This Power Needs Solitude To Develop Freely; The More One Concentrates, The More One Is Likely To Dream Fully, Deeply.

I Have More Memories Than If I Were A Thousand Years Old.

Those Men Get Along Best With Women Who Can Get Along Best Without Them.

The More One Works, The Better One Works, And The More One Wants To Work. The More One Produces, The More Fertile One Grows.

Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire - All Great Theorists, Bent On Dominating Other Minds By Sensuous Means. Their One Dream Was To Create The Irresistible Effect - To Intoxicate, Or Overwhelm. They Looked To Analysis To Provide Them With The Keyboard On Which To Play, With Certainty, On Man's Emotions, And They Sought In Abstract Meditation They Key To Sure And Certain Action Upon Their Subject - Man's Nervous And Psychic Being.

I Set Out To Discover The Why Of It, And To Transform My Pleasure Into Knowledge.

For Each Letter Received From A Creditor, Write Fifty Lines On An Extraterrestrial Subject And You Will Be Saved.

Today I Felt Pass Over Me A Breath Of Wind From The Wings Of Madness.

Tell Me, Enigmatical Man, Whom Do You Love Best, Your Father, Your Mother, Your Sister, Or Your Brother? I Have Neither Father, Nor Mother, Nor Sister, Nor Brother. Your Friends? Now You Use A Word Whose Meaning I Have Never Known. Your Country? I Do Not Know In What Latitude It Lies. Beauty? I Could Indeed Love Her, Goddess And Immortal. Gold? I Hate It As You Hate God. Then, What Do You Love, Extraordinary Stranger? I Love The Clouds The Clouds That Pass Up There Up There The Wonderful Clouds!

The Being Who, For Most Men, Is The Source Of The Most Lively, And Even, Be It Said, To The Shame Of Philosophical Delights, The Most Lasting Joys; The Being Towards Or For Whom All Their Efforts Tend For Whom And By Whom Fortunes Are Made And Lost; For Whom, But Especially By Whom, Artists And Poets Compose Their Most Delicate Jewels; From Whom Flow The Most Enervating Pleasures And The Most Enriching Sufferings - Woman, In A Word, Is Not, For The Artist In General... Only The Female Of The Human Species. She Is Rather A Divinity, A Star.

It Is Easy To Understand Why The Rabble Dislike Cats. A Cat Is Beautiful; It Suggests Ideas Of Luxury, Cleanliness, Voluptuous Pleasures.

To Be Just, That Is To Say, To Justify Its Existence, Criticism Should Be Partial, Passionate And Political, That Is To Say, Written From An Exclusive Point Of View, But A Point Of View That Opens Up The Widest Horizons.

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.

Where Ever I Am Not Is The Place Where I Am Myself.

Il Faut E Pater Le Bourgeois. One Must Astound The Bourgeois.

Nations, Like Families, Have Great Men Only In Spite Of Themselves. They Do Everything In Their Power Not To Have Any. And Therefore, The Great Man, In Order To Exist, Must Possess A Force Of Attack Which Is Greater Than The Force Of Resistance Developed By Millions Of People.

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.

Photographers, You Will Never Become Artists. All You Are Is Mere Copiers.

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.

There Are Women Who Inspire You With The Desire To Conquer Them And To Take Your Pleasure Of Them; But This One Fills You Only With The Desire To Die Slowly Beneath Her Gaze.

An Artist Is An Artist Only Because Of His Exquisite Sense Of Beauty, A Sense Which Shows Him Intoxicating Pleasures, But Which At The Same Time Implies And Contains An Equally Exquisite Sense Of All Deformities And All Disproportion.

And, Drunk With My Own Madness, I Shouted At Him Furiously, "make Life Beautiful! Make Life Beautiful!

It Is By Universal Misunderstanding That All Agree. For If, By Ill Luck, People Understood Each Other, They Would Never Agree.

Drowsing, They Take The Noble Attitude Of A Great Sphinx, Who, In A Desert Land, Sleeps Always, Dreaming Dreams That Have No End.

A Friend Of Mine, The Most Innocuous Dreamer Who Ever Lived, Once Set A Forest On Fire To See, As He Said, If It Would Catch As Easily As People Said. The First Ten Times The Experiment Was A Failure; But On The Eleventh It Succeeded All Too Well.

A Study Of The Great Malady; Horror Of Home.

The Artist Is Today And Has Been For Many Years, Despite His Absence Of Merit, Simply A Spoiled Child. So Many Honors, So Much Money Bestowed On Men Without Souls And Without Education.

To Handle A Language Skillfully Is To Practice A Kind Of Evocative Sorcery.

I Felt Passing Over Me The Wind Of The Wing Of Madness.

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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.

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.

Anybody, Providing He Knows How To Be Amusing, Has The Right To Talk About Himself.

Like Those Great Sphinxes Lounging Through Eternity In Noble Attitudes Upon The Desert Sand, They Gaze Incuriously At Nothing, Calm And Wise.

Our Squalid Society Rushed, Narcissus To A Man, To Gaze On Its Trivial Image On A Scrap Of Metal.

Where Are The Dogs Going? You People Who Pay So Little Attention Ask. They Are Going About Their Business. And They Are Very Punctilious, Without Wallets, Notes, And Without Briefcases.

I Should Like The Fields Tinged With Red, The Rivers Yellow And The Trees Painted Blue. Nature Has No Imagination.

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

Here Comes The Time When, Vibrating On Its Stem, Every Flower Fumes Like A Censer; Noises And Perfumes Circle In The Evening Air.

There Are As Many Kinds Of Beauty As There Are Habitual Ways Of Seeking Happiness.

On The Vaporization And The Centralization Of The Self. All Is There.

In The Domain Of Painting And Statuary, The Present-day Credo Of The Worldly Wise, Especially In France, Is This: ... I Believe That Art Is, And Can Only Be, The Exact Reproduction Of Nature... An Avenging God Has Heard The Prayers Of This Multitude; Daguerre Was His Messiah.

If Wine Disappeared From Human Production, I Believe There Would Be, In The Health And Intellect Of The Planet, A Void, A Deficiency Far More Terrible Than All The Excesses And Deviations For Which Wine Is Made Responsible. Is It Not Reasonable To Suggest That People That Never Drink Wine, Whether Naive Or Doctrinaire, Are Fools Or Hypocrites....?

When A Singer Puts His Hand On His Heart, It Means Usually, I Will Always Love You!

Even As A Child I Felt In My Heart Two Opposite Emotions: The Horror Of Life And The Ecstasy Of Life.

There Is A Certain Cowardice, A Certain Weakness, Rather, Among Respectable Folk. Only Brigands Are Convinced-of What? That They Must Succeed. And So They Do Succeed.

The Poet Is A Kinsman In The Clouds Who Scoffs At Archers, Loves A Stormy Day; But On The Ground, Among The Hooting Crowds, He Cannot Walk, His Wings Are In The Way.

Love Is A Taste For Prostitution. In Fact, There Is No Noble Pleasure That Cannot Be Reduced To Prostitution.

I Watch The Springs, The Summers, The Autumns; And When Comes The Winter Snow Monotonous, I Shut All The Doors And Shutters To Build In The Night My Fairy Palace.

Romanticism Is Precisely Situated Neither In Choice Of Subject, Nor Exact Truth, But In The Way Of Feeling.

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