La volupte unique et supre" me de l'amour g|"t dans la certitude de faire le mal. The unique, supreme pleasure of love consists in the certainty of doing evil. Charles Baudelaire More Quotes by Charles Baudelaire More Quotes From Charles Baudelaire How bittersweet it is, on winter's night, Charles Baudelaire winter night memories And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year. Charles Baudelaire lament fate years What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all its poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes. Charles Baudelaire love-is giving men Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere to a higher plane, and purify yourself by drinking as if it were ambrosia the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness. Free from the futile strivings and the cares which dim existence to a realm of mist, happy is he who wings an upward way on mighty pinions to the fields of light; whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked, outreaches life and readily comprehends the language of flowers and of all mute things. Charles Baudelaire flower drinking morning I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card. Charles Baudelaire nuisance gambling soul 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! Charles Baudelaire too-much impossible forever 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 fate bored winter With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk. Charles Baudelaire drunk virtue wine Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible. Charles Baudelaire determined passion 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! Charles Baudelaire arson knives poison Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive. Charles Baudelaire fleeting dream reality To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons. Charles Baudelaire political criticism views If wine disappeared from human production, I believe there would be, in the health and intellect of the planet, a void, a deficiency far more terrible than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is made responsible. Is it not reasonable to suggest that people that never drink wine, whether naive or doctrinaire, are fools or hypocrites....? Charles Baudelaire wine hypocrite believe Within the bottle's depths, the wine's soul sang one night. Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue. Charles Baudelaire wine soul night When it meows, one scarcely hears it... It has not the need of words to speak the lengthiest phraseologies. Charles Baudelaire cat speak needs Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite. Charles Baudelaire vices taste men As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning, . . . [then] they fall down the curtains. Charles Baudelaire winter morning fall My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it. Charles Baudelaire beast my-heart heart It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance Charles Baudelaire strings devil Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own. Charles Baudelaire stars eye heart
