Background Image

...

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.

-Charles Baudelaire

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

From His Soft Fur,

Charles Baudelaire

...

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.

Views: 31596

Topic

More From Charles Baudelaire

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

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

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

Procrastination

Woman Is Natural, That Is To Say, Abominable.

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

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.

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.

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

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

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

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.

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

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

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

What Is Art? Prostitution.

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

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

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.

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

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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

Strangeness Is An Ingredient Necessary In Beauty.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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.

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.

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.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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.

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

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.

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

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

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

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

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

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 Will To Work Must Dominate, For Art Is Long And Time Is Brief.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

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

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.

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.

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

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

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.

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.

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

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.

I Am A Cemetery By The Moon Unblessed.

Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters.

Strange Phenomena

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

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

I Throw Fresh Seeds Out. Who Knows What Survives?

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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

Finer Than Any Sand Are Dusts Of Gold That Gleam, Vague Starpoints, In The Mystic Iris Of Their Eyes.

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.

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.

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

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

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

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.

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

Wine Transforms Moles Into Eagles.

Dancing Can Reveal All The Mystery That Music Conceals.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

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

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

An Artist Is Only An Artist On Condition That He Neglects No Aspect Of His Dual Nature. This Dualism Is The Power Of Being Oneself And Someone Else At One And The Same Time.

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

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

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.

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

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

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

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?

...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.

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

Funny Basketball

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

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

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

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

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

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.

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....?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

Perfumes, Colours And Sounds Echo One Another.

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.

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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

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.

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

My Heart Is Lost; The Beasts Have Eaten It.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Music Fathoms The Sky.

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

A Silent Mouth Is Sweet To Hear.

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

Trending Author

Bernard Meltzer

Category