Charles Baudelaire
Poet
1821-04-09 – 1867-08-31
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet, essayist, and art critic.
Books by Charles Baudelaire
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Les fleurs du mal
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Quotes by Charles Baudelaire
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Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
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Music fathoms the sky.
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Nature can counsel nothing but crime.
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Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.
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I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.
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The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.
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The Beautiful is always strange.
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Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.
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Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.
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I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.
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The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.
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Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.
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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 an essential part and characteristic of beauty.
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A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
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I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.
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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!
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If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.
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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 thereUp there the wonderful clouds!
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If rape or arson, poison or the knifeHas wove no pleasing patterns in the stuffOf this drab canvas we accept as life -It is because we are not bold enough!
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Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.
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