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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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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Above My Cradle Loomed

Charles Baudelaire

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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.

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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.

The Cannon Thunders... Limbs Fly In All Directions... One Can Hear The Groans Of Victims And The Howling Of Those Performing The Sacrifice... It's Humanity In Search Of Happiness.

All Forms Of Beauty, Like All Possible Phenomena, Contain An Element Of The Eternal And An Element Of The Transitory - Of The Absolute And Of The Particular. Absolute And Eternal Beauty Does Not Exist, Or Rather It Is Only An Abstraction Creamed From The General Surface Of Different Beauties. The Particular Element In Each Manifestation Comes From The Emotions: And Just As We Have Our Own Particular Emotions, So We Have Our Own Beauty.

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.

The People Adore Authority.

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.

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

Imitating Others

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

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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

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

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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

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

It Is Necessary To Work, If Not From Inclination, At Least From Despair. Everything Considered, Work Is Less Boring Than Amusing Oneself.

Genius Is Nothing More Nor Less Than Childhood Recaptured At Will.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am A Cemetery By The Moon Unblessed.

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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?

As For Techniques And Processes, As Seen In The Works Themselves, Neither Public Nor Artists Will Find Anything About Them Here. Those Things Are Learned In The Studio And The Public Is Interested Only In The Results.

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

My Concern Today Is With The Painting Of Manners Of The Present. The Past Is Interesting Not Only By Reason Of The Beauty Which Could Be Distilled From It By Those Artists For Whom It Was The Present, But Also Precisely Because It Is The Past, For Its Historical Value. It Is The Same With The Present. The Pleasure Which We Derive From The Representation Of The Present Is Due Not Only To The Beauty With Which It Can Be Invested, But Also To Its Essential Quality Of Being Present

Historical Value

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

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

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.

Life Is A Hospital In Which Every Patient Is Possessed By A Desire To Change His Bed.

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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

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

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

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.

All Fashions Are Charming, Or Rather Relatively Charming, Each One Being A New Striving, More Or Less Well Conceived, After Beauty, An Approximate Statement Of An Ideal, The Desire For Which Constantly Teases The Unsatisfied Human Mind.

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.

Where One Should See Only What Is Beautiful, Our Public Looks Only For What Is True.

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

I Love Wagner, But The Music I Prefer Is That Of A Cat Hung Up By Its Tail Outside A Window And Trying To Stick To The Panes Of Glass With Its Claws.

All Good And Genuine Draftsmen Draw According To The Picture Inscribed In Their Minds, And Not According To Nature.

The Son Will Run Away From The Family Not At Eighteen But At Twelve, Emancipated By His Gluttonous Precocity; He Will Fly Not To Seek Heroic Adventures, Not To Deliver A Beautiful Prisoner From A Tower, Not To Immortalize A Garret With Sublime Thoughts, But To Found A Business, To Enrich Himself And To Compete With His Infamous Papa.

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

The Vices Of Man, As Full Of Horror As One Might Suppose Them To Be, Contain The Proof (if In Nothing Else But Their Infinitely Expandable Nature) Of His Taste For The Infinite; Only, It Is A Taste That Often Takes A Wrong Turn.

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.

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.

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.

As A Remedy Against All Ills - Poverty, Sickness, And Melancholy - Only One Thing Is Absolutely Necessary: A Liking For Work

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.

Let Us Beware Of Common Folk, Of Common Sense, Of Sentiment, Of Inspiration, And Of The Obvious.

The More A Man Cultivates The Arts The Less He Fornicates. A More And More Apparent Cleavage Occurs Between The Spirit And The Brute.

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.

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

With Wine, Poetry, Or Virtue As You Choose. But Get Drunk.

Thanks Be To God, Who Gives Us Sufferingas Sacred Remedy For All Our Sins,that Best And Purest Essence Which Preparesthe Strong In Spirit For Divine Delights!

It Is Regrettable That, Among The Rights Of Man, The Right Of Contradicting Oneself Has Been Forgotten.

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

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.

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

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Evil Is Done Without Effort, Naturally, It's Destiny; Good Is Always The Product Of Skill.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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

There Are Moments Of Existence When Time And Space Are More Profound, And The Awareness Of Existence Is Immensely Heightened.

...an Industry Which Can Furnish Results Identical To Nature Must Be The Absolute In Art.

...and The Lamp Having At Last Resigned Itself To Death. There Was Nothing Now But Firelight In The Room, And Every Time A Flame Uttered A Gasp For Breath It Flushed Her Amber Skin With The Blood Of Its Bloom.

Everything That Is Beautiful And Noble Is The Product Of Reason And Calculation.

Even If It Were Proven That God Didn't Exist, Religion Would Still Be Saintly And Divine.

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.

What Is Art? Prostitution.

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.

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

A Study Of The Great Malady; Horror Of Home.

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

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.

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.

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

I Am Unable To Understand How A Man Of Honor Could Take A Newspaper In His Hands Without A Shudder Of Disgust.

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

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

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.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

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.

God Is The Only Being Who, In Order To Reign, Doesn't Even Need To Exist.

Whether You Come From Heaven Or Hell, What Does It Matter, O Beauty!

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

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

What Do I Care If You Are Good? Be Beautiful! And Be Sad!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

The Man Who Says His Evening Prayer Is A Captain Posting His Sentinels. He Can Sleep.

Nations, Like Families, Have Great Men Only In Spite Of Themselves.

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

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

The Devil's Hand Directs Our Every Move - / The Things We Loathed Become The Things We Love

Music Fathoms The Sky.

A Silent Mouth Is Sweet To Hear.

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

It Is One Of The Prodigious Privileges Of Art That The Horrific, Artistically Expressed, Becomes Beauty, And That Sorrow, Given Rhythm And Cadence, Fills The Spirit With A Calm Joy.

The Taste For Pleasure Attaches Us To The Present. The Concern With Our Salvation Leaves Us Hanging On The Future.

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

Modernity Is The Transient, The Fleeting, The Contingent; It Is One Half Of Art, The Other Being The Eternal And The Immovable.

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

Wine Transforms Moles Into Eagles.

Ascend Beyond The Sickly Atmosphere To A Higher Plane, And Purify Yourself By Drinking As If It Were Ambrosia The Fire That Fills And Fuels Emptiness. Free From The Futile Strivings And The Cares Which Dim Existence To A Realm Of Mist, Happy Is He Who Wings An Upward Way On Mighty Pinions To The Fields Of Light; Whose Thoughts Like Larks Spontaneously Rise Into The Morning Sky; Whose Flight, Unchecked, Outreaches Life And Readily Comprehends The Language Of Flowers And Of All Mute Things.

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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!

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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

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

Nothing Can Be Done Except Little By Little.

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

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

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.

Inspiration Comes Of Working Every Day.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Hashish Will Be, Indeed, For The Impressions And Familiar Thoughts Of The Man, A Mirror Which Magnifies, Yet No More Than A Mirror.

I Have Always Been Astonished That Women Were Allowed To Enter Churches. What Conversation Can They Possibly Have With God? The Eternal Venus (caprice, Hysteria, Fantasy) Is One Of The Seductive Forms Of The Devil.

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

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.

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

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

We Are All Born Marked For Evil.

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.

If The Poet Has Pursued A Moral Objective, He Has Diminished His Poetic Force.

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.

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

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

Doubt, Or The Absence Of Faith And Naivete, Is A Vice Peculiar To This Age, For No One Is Obedient Nowadays; And Naivete, Which Means The Dominance Of Temperament In The Manner, Is A Gift From God, Possessed By Very Few.

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

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

He Possessed The Logic Of All Good Intentions And A Knowledge Of All The Tricks Of His Trade, And Yet He Never Succeeded At Anything, Because He Believed Too Much In The Impossible. Surprising? Why So? He Was Forever In The Act Of Conceiving It!

The Habit Of Doing One's Duty Drives Away Fear.

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.

What I Say Is That The Supreme And Singular Joy Of Making Love Resides In The Certainty Of Doing Evil.

In Literature As In Ethics, There Is Danger, As Well As Glory, In Being Subtle. Aristocracy Isolates Us.

One Must Work, If Not From Inclination, At Least Out Of Despair — Since It Proves, On Close Examination, That Work Is Less Boring Than Amusing Oneself.

Laments Of An Icarus The Paramours Of Courtesans Are Well And Satisfied, Content. But As For Me My Limbs Are Rent Because I Clasped The Clouds As Mine. I Owe It To The Peerless Stars Which Flame In The Remotest Sky That I See Only With Spent Eyes Remembered Suns I Knew Before. In Vain I Had At Heart To Find The Center And The End Of Space. Beneath Some Burning, Unknown Gaze I Feel My Very Wings Unpinned And, Burned Because I Beauty Loved, I Shall Not Know The Highest Bliss, And Give My Name To The Abyss Which Waits To Claim Me As Its Own.

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

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

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.

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

I Can Barely Conceive Of A Type Of Beauty In Which There Is No Melancholy.

These Beings Have No Other Status, But That Of Cultivating The Idea Of Beauty In Their Own Persons, Of Satisfying Their Passions, Of Feeling And Thinking.... Contrary To What Many Thoughtless People Seem To Believe, Dandyism Is Not Even An Excessive Delight In Clothes And Material Elegance. For The Perfect Dandy, These Things Are No More Than The Symbol Of The Aristocratic Superiority Of His Mind.

Perfumes, Colours And Sounds Echo One Another.

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.

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

It Is At Once By Way Of Poetry And Through Poetry, As With Music, That The Soul Glimpses Splendors From Beyond The Tomb; And When An Exquisite Poem Brings One's Eyes To The Point Of Tears, Those Tears Are Not Evidence Of An Excess Of Joy, They Are Witness Far More To An Exacerbated Melancholy, A Disposition Of The Nerves, A Nature Exiled Among Imperfect Things, Which Would Like To Possess, Without Delay, A Paradise Revealed On This Very Same Earth.

Imperfect Things

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

A Frenzied Passion For Art Is A Canker That Devours Everything Else.

In Certain Almost Supernatural States Of The Soul, The Profundity Of Life Reveals Itself Entirely In The Spectacle, However Ordinary It May Be, Before One's Eyes. It Becomes Its Symbol.

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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.

Man Loves Man So Much That When He Flees The City, It Is Still To Seek The Crowd, That Is, To Rebuild The City In The Country.

In This Horror Of Solitude, This Need To Lose His Ego In Exterior Flesh, Which Man Calls Grandly The Need For Love.

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

Nearly All Our Originality Comes From The Stamp That Time Impresses Upon Our Sensibility.

Funny Basketball

No Task Is A Long One But The Task On Which One Dare Not Start. It Becomes A Nightmare.

Procrastination

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

A Sweetheart Is A Bottle Of Wine, A Wife Is A Wine Bottle.

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

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

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

Relate Comic Things In Pompous Fashion. Irregularity, In Other Words The Unexpected, The Surprising, The Astonishing, Are Essential To And Characteristic Of Beauty. Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony. The Blend Of The Grotesque And The Tragic Are Attractive To The Mind, As Is Discord To Blasé Ears. Imagine A Canvas For A Lyrical, Magical Farce, For A Pantomime, And Translate It Into A Serious Novel. Drown The Whole Thing In An Abnormal, Dreamy Atmosphere, In The Atmosphere Of Great Days … The Region Of Pure Poetry.

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

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All Beauty.

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.

Always Be Drunk ... Get Drunk Militantly. Just Get Drunk.

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.

La, Tout N’est Qu’ordre Et Beauté Luxe, Calme Et Volupté There, There Is Nothing Else But Grace And Measure, Richness, Quietness, And Pleasure.

For The Perfect Idler, For The Passionate Observer It Becomes An Immense Source Of Enjoyment To Establish His Dwelling In The Throng, In The Ebb And Flow, The Bustle, The Fleeting And The Infinite. To Be Away From Home And Yet To Feel At Home Anywhere; To See The World, To Be At The Very Centre Of The World, And Yet To Be Unseen Of The World, Such Are Some Of The Minor Pleasures Of Those Independent, Intense And Impartial Spirits, Who Do Not Lend Themselves Easily To Linguistic Definitions. The Observer Is A Prince Enjoying His Incognito Wherever He Goes.

Any Man Who Does Not Accept The Conditions Of Life Sells His Soul.

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.

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

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

Woman Is Natural, That Is To Say, Abominable.

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

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.

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.

On The Day When A Young Writer Corrects His First Proof-sheet He Is As Proud As A Schoolboy Who Has Just Got His First Dose Of Pox.

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

This Industry [photography], By Invading The Territories Of Art, Has Become Art's Most Mortal Enemy.

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!

The Dandy Should Aspire To Be Uninterruptedly Sublime. He Should Live And Sleep In Front Of A Mirror.

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.

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

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?

The Form Of A Town Changes More Swiftly Alas! Than The Heart Of A Mortal.

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 Poet Enjoys The Incomparable Privilege Of Being Able To Be Himself And Others, As He Wishes.

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.

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