573 Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

Oh foul magnificence, sublime disgrace.

Etre un homme utile m’a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux. To be useful has always seemed to me quite hideous.

La’, tout n’est qu’ordre et beaute, Luxe, calme et volupte. There where all is order and beauty. Lush, calm and voluptuous.

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!

The habit of doing one’s duty drives away fear.

Samuel was, more than all the others, the man of failed works of beauty; – a fantastical and sickly creature, whose poetry shines forth much more in his person than in his works, and who, around one o’clock in the morning, between the dazzling of a coal fire and the clock’s tick-tock, always seemed to be the god of impotence, – a modern and hermaphrodite god, – so colossal an impotence, so enormous, reaching epic proportions!

Avalanche, veux-tu m’emporter dans ta chute?

A precious liquid, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias – because it is made from our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love – we must be stingy with it.

The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.