Charles Baudelaire was a poet, translator, writer and art critic from France; who lived in the 19th century and produced a body of work that is considered among the finest by literature enthusiasts. Baudelaire is regarded as a great moderniser of the French literature and his biggest innovation was the introduction of the ‘prose-poetry’. The ‘prose-poetry’ style in poems went on to inspire many of the leading French poets like Stephane Malarme and Paul Verlaine among others. The book of poetry titled ‘The Flowers of Evil’ published in 1857 remains his most well-known work and is widely regarded as his greatest work. Baudelaire was also an art critic of great standing in the Parisian art press and in addition to that he was also a popular essayist. Among his works of translation; the most famous is the translated version of the works of American short story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Among his other contributions to the world of French literature is the word ‘modernity’ that he coined in order to describe the life of people in a large city. Baudelaire was a man of great depth and intellect and his life and work are also the sources of great quotes which can inspire people even today. Here are some of the selected ones.Â
There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.
What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?
Charles Baudelaire
The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.
He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.
Charles Baudelaire
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.
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!
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.
All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
Charles Baudelaire
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
Charles Baudelaire
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!
Charles Baudelaire
We revel in the laxness of the path we take.
Charles Baudelaire
In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.
Charles Baudelaire
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.
And yet
to wine, to opium even, I prefer
the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;
and in the wasteland of desire
your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.
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.
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.
Charles Baudelaire
In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!
The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.
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
Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?
Charles Baudelaire
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!
Each day we take another step to hell,
Descending through the stench, unhorrified
Charles Baudelaire
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Go then, a starveling girl
With no perfume or pearls,
Only your nudity
O my beauty!
Charles Baudelaire
But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?
It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance
Charles Baudelaire
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.
Ant swarming City
City full of dreams
Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve
Charles Baudelaire
The child, in love with prints and maps,
Holds the whole world in his vast appetite.
How large the earth is under the lamplight!
But in the eyes of memory, how the world is cramped!
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Fruit free of any bruises, not yet broken open, / With flesh so firm and smooth, it cried out to be eaten!
Charles Baudelaire
Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.
 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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