573 Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

Eternal superiority of the Dandy. What is the Dandy?

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!

Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.

and over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year;

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.

Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers.