Charles Baudelaire

France
9 Apr 1821 // 31 Aug 1867
Poet / Critic / Translator

Quotes

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To be a serviceable man has always seemed to me something quite repulsive
Genius is only childhood recovered at will, childhood now gifted to express itself with the faculties of manhood and with the analytic mind that allows him to give order to the heap of unwittingly hoarded material
This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed
The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist
There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for
What good is it to accomplish projects, when the project itself is enjoyment enough?
What matters an eternity of damnation to someone who has found in one second the infinity of joy?
Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity
All beauties, like all possible phenomena, have something of the eternal and something of the ephemeral - of the absolute and the particular
Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays