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...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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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...and The Lamp Having

Charles Baudelaire

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...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.

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All The Visible Universe Is Nothing But A Shop Of Images And Signs.

Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters.

Strange Phenomena

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.

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

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

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.

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 Love? The Need Of Coming Out Of One's Self.

Amer Savoir, Celui Qu'on Tire Du Voyage! Bitter Is The Knowledge Gained In Travelling.

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.

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

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.

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.

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

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

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.

I Am A Cemetery By The Moon Unblessed.

Modernity Is The Transitory, The Fugitive, The Contingent, Which Make Up One Half Of Art, The Other Being The Eternal And The Immutable. This Transitory Fugitive Element, Which Is Constantly Changing, Must Not Be Despised Or Neglected.

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....?

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

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.

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.

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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.

Blessed Art Thou, Lord, Who Giveth Suffering As A Divine Remedy For Our Impurities.

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

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.

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!

From His Soft Fur, Golden And Brown, Goes Out So Sweet A Scent, One Night I Might Have Been Embalmed In It By Giving Him One Little Pet. He Is My Household's Guardian Soul; He Judges, He Presides, Inspires All Matters In His Royal Realm; Might He Be Fairy? Or A God? When My Eyes, To This Cat I Love Drawn As By A Magnet's Force, Turn Tamely Back Upon That Appeal, And When I Look Within Myself, I Notice With Astonishment The Fire Of His Opal Eyes, Clear Beacons Glowing, Living Jewels, Taking My Measure, Steadily.

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

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

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.

Passion I Hate, And Spirit Does Me Wrong. Let Us Love Gently.

A Man Who Drinks Only Water Has A Secret To Hide From His Fellow Men.

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

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

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.

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.

My Love, Do You Recall The Object Which We Saw, That Fair, Sweet, Summer Morn! At A Turn In The Path A Foul Carcass On A Gravel Strewn Bed, Its Legs Raised In The Air, Like A Lustful Woman, Burning And Dripping With Poisons, Displayed In A Shameless, Nonchalant Way Its Belly, Swollen With Gases.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

From That Moment Onwards, Our Loathsome Society Rushed, Like Narcissus, To Contemplate Its Trivial Image On A Metallic Plate. A Form Of Lunacy, An Extraordinary Fanaticism Took Hold Of These New Sun-worshippers.

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

The Study Of Beauty Is A Duel In Which The Artist Cries Out In Terror Before He Is Defeated.

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

We Love Women In Proportion To Their Degree Of Strangeness To Us.

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.

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

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.

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

...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.

A Work Of Art Should Be Like A Well-planned Crime.

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

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.

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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

You Have To Be Always Drunk. That's All There Is To It-it's The Only Way. So As Not To Feel The Horrible Burden Of Time That Breaks Your Back And Bends You To The Earth, You Have To Be Continually Drunk. But On What? Wine, Poetry Or Virtue, As You Wish. But Be Drunk.

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

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

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

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 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.

My Heart Is Lost; The Beasts Have Eaten It.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

A Dandy Does Nothing.

Happy Is The Man Who Can With Vigorous Wing Mount To Those Luminous Serene Fields! The Man Whose Thoughts, Like Larks, Take Liberated Flight Toward The Morning Skies --who Hovers Over Life And Understands Without Effort The Language Of Flowers And Voiceless Things!

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

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?

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.

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.

For The Merchant, Even Honesty Is A Financial Speculation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Poetry Has No Goal Other Than Itself; It Can Have No Other, And No Poem Will Be So Great, So Noble, So Truly Worthy Of The Name Of Poem, Than One Written Uniquely For The Pleasure Of Writing A Poem.

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.

Every Healthy Man Can Do Without Food For Two Days — But Without Poetry, Never!

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

I Love The Clouds... The Clouds That Pass By... Over There... Over There... Those Lovely Clouds!

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

Imitating Others

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

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

What Can An Eternity Of Damnation Matter To Someone Who Has Felt, If Only For A Second, The Infinity Of Delight?

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

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

In Putting Off What One Has To Do, One Runs The Risk Of Never Being Able To Do It.

Procrastination

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

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

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

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

The Man Who Is Unable To People His Solitude Is Equally Unable To Be Alone In A Bustling Crowd. The Poet Enjoys The Incomparable Privilege Of Being Able To Be Himself Or Some One Else, As He Chooses. [...] The Solitary And Thoughtful Stroller Finds A Singular Intoxication In This Universal Communion. [...] 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...to The Unexpected As It Comes Along, The Stranger As He Passes.

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

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.

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

As The End Of The Century Approaches, All Our Culture Is Like Flies At The Beginning Of Winter. Having Lost Their Agility, Dreamy And Demented, They Turn Slowly About The Window In The First Icy Mists Of Morning, . . . [then] They Fall Down The Curtains.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

By Nature, By Necessity Itself, [primitive Man] Is Encyclopedic, While Civilized Man Finds Himself Confined In The Infinitely Small Regions Of Specialization.

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.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

I Have Cultivated My Hysteria With Pleasure And Terror.

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

A Silent Mouth Is Sweet To Hear.

Today I Had A Strange Warning. I Felt The Wind Of Insanity Brush My Mind.

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

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

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.

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 World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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.

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

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

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

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

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

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

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

Genius Is Simply Childhood, Rediscovered By An Act Of Will.

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All Beauty.

Il Faut Travailler Sinon Par Go U" T, Au Moins Par De Sespoir, Puisque, Tout Bien Ve Rifie , Travailler Est Moins Ennuyeux Que S'amuser. We Should Work: If Not By Preference, At Least Out Of Despair. All Things Considered, Work Is Less Boring Than Amusement.

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.

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.

The Idea Of Beauty Which Man Creates For Himself Imprints Itself On His Whole Attire, Crumples Or Stiffens His Dress, Rounds Off Or Squares His Gesture, And In The Long Run Even Ends By Subtly Penetrating The Very Features Of His Face. Man Ends By Looking Like His Ideal Self. These Engravings Can Be Translated Either Into Beauty Or Ugliness; In One Direction, They Become Caricatures, In The Other, Antique Statues.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

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

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

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

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.

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

I Am A Cemetery Abhorred By The Moon, In Which Long Worms Crawl Like Remorse.

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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.

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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

A Study Of The Great Malady; Horror Of Home.

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Procrastination

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

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

Quand Notre Coeur A Fait Une Fois Sa Vendange, Vivre Est Un Mal. Once Our Heart Has Been Harvested Once, Life Becomes Miserable.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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.

Dandyism Is The Last Flicker Of Heroism In Decadent Ages.... Dandyism Is A Setting Sun; Like The Declining Star, It Is Magnificent, Without Heat And Full Of Melancholy. But Alas! The Rising Tide Of Democracy, Which Spreads Everywhere And Reduces Everything To The Same Level, Is Daily Carrying Away These Last Champions Of Human Pride, And Submerging, In The Waters Of Oblivion, The Last Traces Of These Remarkable Myrmidons.

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

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.

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!

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.

The Poet Is Like The Prince Of The Clouds, Who Haunts The Tempest And Laughs At The Archer. Exiled On The Ground In The Midst Of The Jeering Crowd, His Giant's Wings Keep Him From Walking.

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

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.

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

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

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!

Cats, So Strong And Gentle, The Pride Of The Household.

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

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

It Would Be Difficult For Me Not To Conclude That The Most Perfect Type Of Masculine Beauty Is Satan, As Portrayed By Milton.

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.

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.

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

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

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

I Have To Confess That I Had Gambled On My Soul And Lost It With Heroic Insouciance And Lightness Of Touch. The Soul Is So Impalpable, So Often Useless, And Sometimes Such A Nuisance, That I Felt No More Emotion On Losing It Than If, On A Stroll, I Had Mislaid My Visiting Card.

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Christopher Hitchens

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