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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.

-Charles Baudelaire

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There Is A Certain

Charles Baudelaire

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Everything For Me Becomes Allegory

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

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 Study Of The Great Malady; Horror Of Home.

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.

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

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.

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

Inspiration Comes Of Working Every Day.

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

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.

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.

But A Dandy Can Never Be A Vulgar Man

A Multitude Of Small Delights Constitute Happiness

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

Funny Basketball

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

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

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

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....?

Drink Wine, Drink Poetry, Drink Virtue.

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.

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

Above My Cradle Loomed The Bookcase Where/ Latin Ashes And The Dust Of Greece/ Mingled With Novels, History, And Verse/ In One Dark Babel. I Was Folio-high/ When I First Heard The Voices.

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

My Love, Do You Recall The Object Which We Saw, That Fair, Sweet, Summer Morn! At A Turn In The Path A Foul Carcass On A Gravel Strewn Bed, Its Legs Raised In The Air, Like A Lustful Woman, Burning And Dripping With Poisons, Displayed In A Shameless, Nonchalant Way Its Belly, Swollen With Gases.

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.

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

We Revel In The Laxness Of The Path We Take.

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.

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

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.

The World Only Goes Round By Misunderstanding.

Like Those Great Sphinxes Lounging Through Eternity In Noble Attitudes Upon The Desert Sand, They Gaze Incuriously At Nothing, Calm And Wise.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Imitating Others

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

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

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.

The People Adore Authority.

Discover Day To Day Excitement.

What A Mysterious Faculty Is That Queen Of The Faculties!

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

Dance Can Reveal Everything Mysterious That Is Hidden In Music

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

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

But The True Voyagers Are Only Those Who Leave Just To Be Leaving; Hearts Light, Like Balloons, They Never Turn Aside From Their Fatality And Without Knowing Why They Always Say: "let's Go!

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

Even When She Walks One Would Believe That She Dances.

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.

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

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

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.

Sexuality Is The Lyricism Of The Masses.

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Wine Transforms Moles Into Eagles.

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

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

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

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

Genius Is Childhood Recalled At Will.

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.

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

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

God Is The Only Being Who, In Order To Reign, Doesn't Even Need To Exist.

The Beautiful Is Always Bizarre.

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.

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

I Have Cultivated My Hysteria With Pleasure And Terror.

We Are All Born Marked For Evil.

Love Is The Natural Occupation Of The Man Of Leisure.

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

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

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

Always Be A Poet, Even In Prose.

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

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

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

There Is A Word, In A Verb, Something Sacred Which Forbids Us From Using It Recklessly. To Handle A Language Cunningly Is To Practice A Kind Of Evocative Sorcery.

Progress, This Great Heresy Of Decay.

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.

Eternal Superiority Of The Dandy. What Is The Dandy?

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.

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

Genius Is Simply Childhood, Rediscovered By An Act Of Will.

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.

Strangeness Is The Indispensable Condiment Of All Beauty.

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.

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.

Evil Comes Up Softly Like A Flower.

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

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

Extract The Eternal From The Ephemeral.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

The World Progresses Only Through Misunderstanding.

Misunderstanding

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

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.

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.

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

Two Fundamental Literary Qualities: Supernaturalism And Irony.

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.

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

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

In Our Corruption We Perceive Beauties Unrevealed To Ancient Times.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Strangeness Is An Ingredient Necessary In Beauty.

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

Procrastination

Remembering Is Only A New Form Of Suffering.

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.

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.

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.

Hypocrite Reader My Fellow My Brother!

The Act Of Love Strongly Resembles Torture Or Surgery.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

In Certain Almost Supernatural States Of The Soul, The Profundity Of Life Reveals Itself Entirely In The Spectacle, However Ordinary It May Be, Before One's Eyes. It Becomes Its Symbol.

Life Swarms With Innocent Monsters.

Strange Phenomena

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

An Oasis Of Horror In A Desert Of Boredom.

I Am The Vampire At My Own Veins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dancing Is Poetry With Arms And Legs.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Bored In France Because Everyone Resembles Voltaire.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

You Walk On Corpses, Beauty, Undismayed.

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.

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.

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

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