The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present.
Category Archive: Charles Baudelaire
Our religion is itself profoundly sad – a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language – so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.
Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.
How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
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.
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.
Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.