Always be a poet, even in prose.
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.
Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
Remembering is only a new form of suffering.
The beautiful is always bizarre.
If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.
What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.
I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.
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.
Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.
Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?
Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.
What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?
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.
I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.
I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
A multitude of small delights constitute happiness
Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.
You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.
Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.
He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.
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.
My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.
I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.
I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.
As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.
I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.
Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious.
The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality.
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!
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
Inspiration comes of working every day.
It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not.
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.
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.
Through the Unknown, we'll find the New
All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.
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
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.
The Beautiful is always strange.
Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.
I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.
Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.
The Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love
And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!
Music fathoms the sky.
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.
Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!
We revel in the laxness of the path we take.
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.
In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.
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 study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.
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.
How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.
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.
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.
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
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?
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!
With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.
Each day we take another step to hell, Descending through the stench, unhorrified
 are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people. ){kind=small}
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.
Go then, a starveling girl With no perfume or pearls, Only your nudity O my beauty!
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?
Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires Sisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short and Art is long.
I know that pain is the one nobility / upon which Hell itself cannot encroach
I am but little disposed to put things in writing. One almost always regrets doing so.
Genius is childhood recovered at will.
It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance
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.
Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.
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.
Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve
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!
Fruit free of any bruises, not yet broken open, / With flesh so firm and smooth, it cried out to be eaten!
Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.
And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year;
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The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).
Wandering aimlessly, broken by my thoughts, Which slowly sharpened daggers at my heart
Scent, sound or sight, beneficent, malign – Who cares if you’re a blessing or a curse, So long as you bring light,
