Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire; April 9, 1821 – August 31, 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 April 1821
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
oasis boredom desert
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.
dance believe ballet
Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.
heart knowing light
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!
flames blood skins
...and the lamp having at last resigned itself to death. There was nothing now but firelight in the room, And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom.
knives patterns stuff
If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!
latin dark dust
Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.
mean men order
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
inspiration common-folk common-sense
Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
hate men two
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.
art literature imitating-others
Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?
life lonely heart
To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.
men important saint
To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing.
artist history dueling
The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.
believe crowds literature
The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.