The whole visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of pasture which the imagination must digest and transform. Charles Baudelaire More Quotes by Charles Baudelaire More Quotes From Charles Baudelaire I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. Charles Baudelaire thousand memories years Even as a child I felt in my heart two opposite emotions: the horror of life and the ecstasy of life. Charles Baudelaire heart two children The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future. Charles Baudelaire hanging-on pleasure taste What do I care if you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad! Charles Baudelaire i-care care beautiful The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes. Charles Baudelaire privilege able wish Inspiration comes of working every day. Charles Baudelaire inspiration imagination Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals. Charles Baudelaire ballet-class dancing dance Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself. Charles Baudelaire amusing know-how literature The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute. Charles Baudelaire spirit men art The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality. Charles Baudelaire appetite immense biographies However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it. Charles Baudelaire unity human-nature may The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things. Charles Baudelaire ambitious soul dream 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 despair beautiful mean Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject, nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling. Charles Baudelaire choices feelings way An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time. Charles Baudelaire dual-nature inspiring art To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. Charles Baudelaire sorcery language practice Everything for me becomes allegory Charles Baudelaire allegory Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. Charles Baudelaire baudelaire like-family men If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible. Charles Baudelaire void wine believe It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy. Charles Baudelaire joy beauty art
