Background Image

...

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.

-Charles Baudelaire

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Have To Confess

Charles Baudelaire

...

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.

Views: 17300

Topic

More From Charles Baudelaire

We Are All Born Marked For Evil.

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

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

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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.

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

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

To Be Away From Home And Yet To Feel Oneself Everywhere At Home; To See The World, To Be At The Centre Of The World, And Yet To Remain Hidden From The World—impartial Natures Which The Tongue Can But Clumsily Define. The Spectator Is A Prince Who Everywhere Rejoices In His Incognito.

What 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.

It Is The Pleasure Of Astonishing Others, And The Proud Satisfaction Of Never Being Astonished By Them.

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

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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

Nature Is A Temple, Where The Living Columns Sometimes Breathe Confusing Speech; Man Walks Within These Groves Of Symbols, Each Of Which Regards Him As A Kindred Thing.

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.

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.

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.

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

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Dancing Can Reveal All The Mystery That Music Conceals.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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!

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.

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

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

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

My Heart Is Lost; The Beasts Have Eaten It.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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

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

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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

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

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

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.

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

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

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

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

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.

Music Fathoms The Sky.

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

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

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

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

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

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.

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

Strangeness Is An Ingredient Necessary In Beauty.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

...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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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 Idea Which Man Forms Of Beauty Imprints Itself Throughout His Attire, Rumples Or Stiffens His Garments, Rounds Off Or Aligns His Gestures, And, Finally, Even Subtly Penetrates The Features Of His Face.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

The People Adore Authority.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

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

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?

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

What Is Art? Prostitution.

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

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

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

The Unique And Supreme Voluptuousness Of Love Lies In The Certainty Of Committing Evil. And Men And Women Know From Birth That In Evil Is Found All Sensual Delight.

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

Funny Basketball

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

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.

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.

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

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

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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.

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

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

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

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

Love Is The Natural Occupation Of The Man Of Leisure.

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Trending Author

Cassandra Clare

Category