It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire

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.
Charles Baudelaire

It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
Charles Baudelaire

It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
Charles Baudelaire

It would perhaps be nice to be alternately the victim and the executioner.
Charles Baudelaire

Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.
Charles Baudelaire

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.
Charles Baudelaire

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.
Charles Baudelaire

Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
Charles Baudelaire

Music fathoms the sky.
Charles Baudelaire

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
Charles Baudelaire

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
Charles Baudelaire

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

Nothing can be done except little by little.
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.
Charles Baudelaire

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.
Charles Baudelaire

Progress, this great heresy of decay.
Charles Baudelaire

Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.
Charles Baudelaire

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
Charles Baudelaire

The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.
Charles Baudelaire