573 Quotes by Charles Baudelaire

"Music fathoms the sky."

"To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity."

"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."

"The saddest thing is that every love has an unhappy ending, and all the more unhappy in proportion to how divinely it began, with what wings it first took flight."

"Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty."

"There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze."

"That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty."

"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."

"Beauty, you walk on corpses, mocking them;"

"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"