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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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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If Photography Is Allowed

Charles Baudelaire

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Nothing Can Be Done Except Little By Little.

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

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.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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

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.

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

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

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.

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

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

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

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

My Heart Is Lost; The Beasts Have Eaten 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.

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

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.

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

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Funny Basketball

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.

Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters.

Strange Phenomena

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.

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

The People Adore Authority.

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!

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

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.

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

Beware Of All The Paradoxical In Love. It Is Simplicity Which Saves, It Is Simplicity Which Brings Happiness...love Should Be Love.

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

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

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

Strangeness Is A Necessary Ingredient In Beauty.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

A Silent Mouth Is Sweet To Hear.

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

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.

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

Dancing Can Reveal All The Mystery That Music Conceals.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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?

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.

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

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.

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

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Certes, Je Sortirai Quant A' Moi Satisfait D'un Monde O U' L'action N'est Pas La Soeur Du Re" Ve. Indeed, For My Part, I Shall Be Happy To Leave A World Where Action Is Not Sister To The Dream.

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

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!

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

Theory Of The True Civilization. It Is Not To Be Found In Gas Or Steam Or Table Turning. It Consists In The Diminution Of The Traces Of Original Sin.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Woman Is Natural, That Is To Say, Abominable.

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.

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

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

I Have Cultivated My Hysteria With Delight And Terror. Now I Suffer Continually From Vertigo, And Today, 23rd Of January, 1862, I Have Received A Singular Warning, I Have Felt The Wind Of The Wing Of Madness Pass Over Me.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

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

Imitating Others

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Am The Vampire At My Own Veins.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

For The Merchant, Even Honesty Is A Financial Speculation.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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

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.

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.

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

Today I Felt Pass Over Me A Breath Of Wind From The Wings Of Madness.

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

We Are All Born Marked For 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 Felt Passing Over Me The Wind Of The Wing Of Madness.

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

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.

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

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.

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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Theodore C. Sorensen

Pedro Almodovar

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