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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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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There Exist Certain Individuals

Charles Baudelaire

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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.

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Man Loves Man So Much That When He Flees The City, It Is Still To Seek The Crowd, That Is, To Rebuild The City In The Country.

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

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.

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!

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

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Inspiration Comes Of Working Every Day.

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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

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.

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

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.

A Silent Mouth Is Sweet To Hear.

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

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

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.

Love Is The Natural Occupation Of The Man Of Leisure.

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

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.

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

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

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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

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

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

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

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

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.

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

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

Procrastination

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

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All Beauty.

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

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.

Strangeness Is An Ingredient Necessary In Beauty.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

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.

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.

We Are All Born Marked For Evil.

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.

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.

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.

Within The Bottle's Depths, The Wine's Soul Sang One Night. Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

La, Tout N’est Qu’ordre Et Beauté Luxe, Calme Et Volupté There, There Is Nothing Else But Grace And Measure, Richness, Quietness, And Pleasure.

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.

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

...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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Ascend Beyond The Sickly Atmosphere To A Higher Plane, And Purify Yourself By Drinking As If It Were Ambrosia The Fire That Fills And Fuels Emptiness. Free From The Futile Strivings And The Cares Which Dim Existence To A Realm Of Mist, Happy Is He Who Wings An Upward Way On Mighty Pinions To The Fields Of Light; Whose Thoughts Like Larks Spontaneously Rise Into The Morning Sky; Whose Flight, Unchecked, Outreaches Life And Readily Comprehends The Language Of Flowers And Of All Mute Things.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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.

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

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

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.

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

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

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Dandy Does Nothing.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

All Fashions Are Charming, Or Rather Relatively Charming, Each One Being A New Striving, More Or Less Well Conceived, After Beauty, An Approximate Statement Of An Ideal, The Desire For Which Constantly Teases The Unsatisfied Human Mind.

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

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.

Ah! Seigneur! Donnez-moi La Force Et Le Courage De Contempler Mon Coeur Et Mon Corps Sans De Go U" T. Lord! Give Me The Strength And The Courage To See My Heart And My Body Without Disgust.

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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.

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

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

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

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

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

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Through The Unknown, We'll Find The New

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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