Background Image

...

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.

-Charles Baudelaire

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Pleasure We Derive

Charles Baudelaire

...

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.

Views: 88001

Topic

More From Charles Baudelaire

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Strangeness Is An Ingredient Necessary In Beauty.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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

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

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

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

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All 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.

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

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!

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.

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.

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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

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

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

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Strangeness Is A Necessary Ingredient In Beauty.

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

The Being Who, For Most Men, Is The Source Of The Most Lively, And Even, Be It Said, To The Shame Of Philosophical Delights, The Most Lasting Joys; The Being Towards Or For Whom All Their Efforts Tend For Whom And By Whom Fortunes Are Made And Lost; For Whom, But Especially By Whom, Artists And Poets Compose Their Most Delicate Jewels; From Whom Flow The Most Enervating Pleasures And The Most Enriching Sufferings - Woman, In A Word, Is Not, For The Artist In General... Only The Female Of The Human Species. She Is Rather A Divinity, A Star.

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Dancing Can Reveal All The Mystery That Music Conceals.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

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.

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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

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

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

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

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

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....?

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

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.

We Are All Born Marked For Evil.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

What Is Art? Prostitution.

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.

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

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.

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

...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.

Nothing Can Be Done Except Little By Little.

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?

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

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.

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

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.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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

Procrastination

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.

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

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

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

Inspiration Comes Of Working Every Day.

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.

I Am The Vampire At My Own Veins.

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

Procrastination

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

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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.

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

Wine Transforms Moles Into Eagles.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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

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

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.

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

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

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

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

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

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.

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

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

Nothing Is As Tedious As The Limping Days, When Snowdrifts Yearly Cover All The Ways, And Ennui, Sour Fruit Of Incurious Gloom, Assumes Control Of Fate’s Immortal Loom

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

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.

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

For The Merchant, Even Honesty Is A Financial Speculation.

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.

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

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?

Trending Author

Category