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Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.
Charles Baudelaire -
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
Charles Baudelaire
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Love is very similar to torture or a surgical operation. Even if the two lovers are very much in love and culminating in mutual desires, one of the two will always be fuller than the other. This one is the operator, the butcher; the other, subjected, the victim.
Charles Baudelaire -
Un soir, l'âme du vin chantait dans les bouteilles:'Homme, vers toi je pousse, ô cher déshérité,Sous ma prison de verre et mes cires vermeilles.'
Charles Baudelaire -
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.
Charles Baudelaire -
Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
Charles Baudelaire -
The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
Charles Baudelaire -
The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.
Charles Baudelaire
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Être un homme utile m'a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux.
Charles Baudelaire -
What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.
Charles Baudelaire -
Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
Charles Baudelaire -
There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.
Charles Baudelaire -
If rape and poison, dagger and burning, have still not embroidered their pleasant designs on the banal canvas of our pitiable destinies, it’s because our souls, alas, are not bold enough!
Charles Baudelaire -
The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.
Charles Baudelaire
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There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Charles Baudelaire -
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
Charles Baudelaire -
France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
Charles Baudelaire -
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.
Charles Baudelaire -
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
Charles Baudelaire -
To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.
Charles Baudelaire
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Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness; Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers!
Charles Baudelaire -
Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.
Charles Baudelaire -
There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
Charles Baudelaire -
Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.
Charles Baudelaire