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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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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For The Perfect Idler,

Charles Baudelaire

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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.

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

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

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.

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

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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

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

Be Always Drunken. Nothing Else Matters: That Is The Only Question. If You Would Not Feel The Horrible Burden Of Time Weighing On Your Shoulders And Crushing You To The Earth, Be Drunken Continually.

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

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

I Love To Watch The Fine Mist Of The Night Come On, The Windows And The Stars Illumined, One By One, The Rivers Of Dark Smoke Pour Upward Lazily, And The Moon Rise And Turn Them Silver. I Shall See The Springs, The Summers, And The Autumns Slowly Pass; And When Old Winter Puts His Blank Face To The Glass, I Shall Close All My Shutters, Pull The Curtains Tight, And Build Me Stately Palaces By Candlelight.

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

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.

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

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

This Life Is A Hospital Where Every Patient Is Possessed With The Desire To Change Beds; One Man Would Like To Suffer In Front Of The Stove, And Another Believes That He Would Recover His Health Beside The Window.

I Will Drop Into Your Chest Like A Vegetal Ambrosia. I Will Be The Grain That Regenerates The Cruelly Plowed Furrow. Poetry Will Be Born Of Our Intimate Union. A God We Shall Create Together, And We Shall Soar Heavenward Like Sunbeams, Perfumes, Butterflies, Birds, And All Winged Things.

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

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

Imitating Others

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

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

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

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.

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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

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

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

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

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

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

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

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

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

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

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

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

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.

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.

A Study Of The Great Malady; Horror Of Home.

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

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

Both Ardent Lovers And Austere Scholars, When Once They Come To The Years Of Discretion, Love Cats, So Strong And Gentle, The Pride Of The Household, Who Like Them Are Sensitive To The Cold, And Sedentary.

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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

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

The Solitary And Thoughtful Stroller Finds A Singular Intoxication In This Universal Communion. The Man Who Loves To Lose Himself In A Crowd Enjoys Feverish Delights That The Egoist Locked Up In Himself As In A Box, And The Slothful Man Like A Mollusk In His Shell, Will Be Eternally Deprived Of. He Adopts As His Own All The Occupations, All The Joys And All The Sorrows That Chance Offers.

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.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

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

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

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

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

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Funny Basketball

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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.

Who Among Us Has Not Dreamt, In Moments Of Ambition, Of The Miracle Of A Poetic Prose, Musical Without Rhythm And Rhyme, Supple And Staccato Enough To Adapt To The Lyrical Stirrings Of The Soul, The Undulations Of Dreams, And Sudden Leaps Of Consciousness.

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.

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!

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

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.

I Have Cultivated My Hysteria With Pleasure And Terror.

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.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

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

There Exist Only Three Beings Worthy Of Respect: The Priest, The Soldier, The Poet. To Know, To Kill, To Create.

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

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

Inspiration Comes Of Working Every Day.

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

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

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

I Am A Cemetery By The Moon Unblessed.

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

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

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.

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

The Priest Is An Immense Being Because He Makes The Crowd Believe Astonishing Things.

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

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

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

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.

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

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

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

There Exist Certain Individuals Who Are, By Nature, Given Purely To Contemplation And Are Utterly Unsuited To Action, And Who, Nevertheless, Under A Mysterious And Unknown Impulse, Sometimes Act With A Speed Which They Themselves Would Have Thought Beyond Them.

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

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

I Am The Vampire At My Own Veins.

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

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.

That Which Is Not Slightly Distorted Lacks Sensible Appeal; From Which It Follows That Irregularity – That Is To Say, The Unexpected, Surprise And Astonishment, Are A Essential Part And Characteristic Of Beauty.

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

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

Artist Should Look At The Reality And Brutality Of Modern Life In All Its Color, Nature With All Its Imperfections - That Should Be The Challenge To The Modern Painter Not The Didactic Idealization Of The Past. The New Generation Should Forge A New Path.

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All Beauty.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

If Rape Or Arson, Poison Or The Knife Has Wove No Pleasing Patterns In The Stuff Of This Drab Canvas We Accept As Life - It Is Because We Are Not Bold Enough!

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

L'imagination Est La Reine Du Vrai, Et Le Possible Est Une Des Provinces Du Vrai. Imagination Is The Queen Of The Truth And The Possible Is One Of The Provinces Of The Truth.

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

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

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

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?

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 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.

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.

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

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

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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.

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.

I Lived For A Long Time Under Vast Porticos That Maritime Suns Tinted With A Thousand Fires, And Whose Great Pillars, Straight And Majestuous In The Evening Made Seem Like Basaltic Caves.

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

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

Wine Transforms Moles Into Eagles.

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

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?

Strangeness Is A Necessary Ingredient In Beauty.

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.

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

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

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!

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

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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.

I Throw Fresh Seeds Out. Who Knows What Survives?

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

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

J'ai Plus De Souvenirs Que Si J'avais Mille Ans. Ihavemorememoriesthanifiwereonethousandyearsold.

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.

Even In The Centuries Which Appear To Us To Be The Most Monstrous And Foolish, The Immortal Appetite For Beauty Has Always Found Satisfaction.

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

Procrastination

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.

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

If Wine Were To Disappear From Human Production, I Believe It Would Cause An Absence, A Failure In Health And Intellect, A Void Much More Terrifying Than All The Recesses And The Deviations For Which Wine Is Regarded As Responsible.

It Is The Greatest Art Of The Devil To Convince Us He Does Not Exist.

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

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