The 100 best phrases of Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French-born poet, essayist, and art critic. He was known both for his exquisite works and for his disorderly and extravagant life, which was not well regarded in the twentieth century. XIX, causing him to be called 'the Dante of a decadent age' and entered the list of 'accursed poets' of France.
In this article you will find a selection of Charles Baudelaire's best quotes that express their way of conceiving life and art.
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Charles Baudelaire's most inspiring phrases
Despite his decadent and bohemian lifestyle, which did not fit the standards of the time, his works in poetry were acclaimed and inspiring for future generations. For this reason, we bring a list with the best phrases of Charles Baudelaire that show his philosophy of life.
1. How many times will I have to shake my bells and kiss your mean forehead, sad caricature?
About the sacrifices we sometimes have to make.
2. For the child, a lover of maps and engravings, the universe is equal to his immense appetite.
Never lose that insatiable spirit of curiosity about the world.
3. Show us in the cases of your rich memories those admirable jewels, made of stars and ethers.
In this phrase by Baudelaire, the author invites us to appreciate all our lived moments.
4. Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter.
What matters are the acts we do on this earth.
5. To know happiness, one must have the courage to swallow it.
To get where you want, we must move away from what prevents us from moving forward.
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6. Love is a crime that cannot be carried out without an accomplice.
Love is a game between two people.
7. Terrible game of love, in which one of the two players must lose control of himself.
When we love, we tend to give all of ourselves without measuring consequences.
8. How many arrows must I waste, oh quiver of mine, to hit that target of mystical character?
There are places that are impossible for us to reach
9. To tell the truth, I fear that my zeal has not brought me happiness.
For a time when social appearance was everything, Baudelaire may have been quite alone.
10. For a few hours we should not have silence, but rest.
Rest is necessary in our life.
11. In order not to be the martyred slaves of time, get drunk, get drunk without ceasing!, with wine, poetry or virtue, as you like.
You have to have some sort of distraction from social pressures.
12. I think there are few examples of a life more dilapidated than mine.
A man who was never fully understood.
13. Irregularity, that is, the unexpected, surprise or astonishment are essential and characteristic elements of beauty.
The ingredients that make up real beauty.
14. O Beauty! huge, hideous, naive monster! If your look, your smile, your foot open the door to an infinity that I love and have never known.
An impossible love and the desire to get there.
15. A book is a garden, an orchard, a warehouse, a party, a company along the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
A book is a wonder enclosed in its pages.
16. The best remedy against all ills is work.
Work helps us grow and develop in the world.
17. It is through dreams that man communicates with the world of shadows that surrounds him.
It is a place to access the deepest part of us.
18. It is beautiful and more than beautiful: it is surprising.
A beauty that goes beyond appearance.
19. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability.
It's how we can harness our creativity for something greater.
20. Always be a poet, even in prose.
Poetry can come in many forms.
21. The loquacious Humanity, that in its genius insists and crazy, today as before, with the light as a witness, shouts to God, in its angry agony.
The rhetoric about people's complaints to God.
22. To work, you just have to be convinced of one thing: that working is less boring than having fun.
That is why it is so important to dedicate ourselves to something that we love to do.
23. I'm the wound and the knife!
We can hurt and be hurt in the same way.
24. Free man, you will always adore the sea! The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul In the infinite development of its waves, And your spirit is not a less bitter abyss.
The sea is the maximum expression of freedom.
25. There are women who inspire desires to conquer them or to enjoy them; but it instills the desire to die slowly before his eyes.
Different types of passions that ignite in the soul.
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26. Your empty eyes are full of nocturnal visions, and I see again and again reflected on your complexion Madness and horror, cold and taciturn.
Ghosts of past actions that never cease to haunt.
27. A great smile is a beautiful face of a giant.
The smile is the first beauty par excellence.
28. The greatest honor of the poet is to accomplish exactly what he had planned to do.
Leave in words everything that is inside.
29. The most irreparable of vices is doing evil out of foolishness.
Especially those people who are carried away by their envy and insist on being unhappy.
30. What is love? The desire to get out of oneself.
Do you think this is true about love?
31. What does eternal damnation matter to someone who has found for a second the infinity of jouissance?
We focus on enjoying the present more than worrying about the future.
32. Who does not know how to populate his loneliness, does not know how to be alone among a busy crowd.
If you don't feel comfortable with yourself you will never feel accompanied, even if you are surrounded by thousands of people.
33. Dance can reveal all that is mysterious that is hidden in music, and has the additional merit of being palpable and human.
Dance is the expression of what music makes us feel.
34. His eyes are like stars in which mystery sparkles vaguely, and his gaze illuminates like lightning: it is an explosion in the darkness.
An attraction that leaves a great impact.
35. Do not despise the sensitivity of anyone. The sensitivity of each one is his genius.
Sensitivity is someone's true letter of introduction.
36. Art is long and time is short.
Art is perpetual and is always evolving.
37. This power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more likely one is to dream fully and deeply.
Solitude is necessary in many cases to grow.
38. The black in her abounds; and everything that inspires is nocturnal and profound.
A darkness that enchants, that is perceived as a unique beauty.
39. Dance is poetry with arms and legs.
Comparing the dance with the magic of the verses.
40. In order not to feel the horrible weight of Time that tires your back and bends you towards the earth, you have to get drunk without respite. But from what? Of wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But get drunk.
The addictions that we must acquire.
41. I can hardly conceive of a kind of beauty in which there is no melancholy.
The poet believed that melancholy is the greatest of the muses.
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42. For the trader, even honesty is financial speculation.
Traders are the most suspicious people of all, with good reason.
43. Hatred is a drunk at the back of a tavern, constantly renewing his thirst with drink.
People who hate others will always find new reasons to feed their disdain.
44. Solitude is the proper state of genius and of the chosen one.
A solitary state seems to be something all geniuses have in common.
45. God would be unjust if we were not guilty.
Could it be that we deserve everything bad that has happened in the world?
46. What is created by the spirit is more alive than matter.
This is because it is created with a true and honest will.
47. Two rights should be added to the list of human rights: the right to disorder and the right to leave.
Two rights that, for the poet, were necessary for true human freedom.
48. The energy in pleasure creates discomfort and positive suffering.
The only tiredness that we never get tired of.
49. More than one flower regretfully unfolds its sweet perfume like a secret in deep solitudes.
Loneliness is part of life, we cannot escape from it.
50. Wine resembles man: you never know to what extent you can appreciate or despise it, love or hate it.
A strange comparison, but one that is quite accurate.
51. The poison of power that enervates the despot.
Tyrant rulers allow themselves to be blinded by power.
52. I know that pain is the only nobility.
Pain, for Baudelaire, is the most real feeling of all.
53. It is never excusable to be evil, but there is some merit in knowing that one is.
The malice should be focused on having determination, not hurting others.
54. This need to forget his self in the strange flesh is what man nobly calls the need to love.
Many hide behind their relationships to forget about the sorrows of their lives.
55. Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.
The most beautiful things are those that are unique and different.
56. Dreaming magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even to those who possess it.
It's not just about imagining better things, but about having the ability to go for them to make them come true.
57. Nothing can be done except little by little.
It is better to go slowly but surely than in a hurry where we make irremediable mistakes.
58. God is the only being who did not even need to exist in order to reign.
The only ruler that most people admire.
59. How big is the world in the light of lamps! And how small it is in the eyes of memory!
The world must be seen with the eyes of adventurers.
60. The worm will gnaw at your skin like remorse.
The weight that constantly grows on our minds with regrets.
61. Pure love is a sun whose intensity absorbs all other tasks.
Love has the ability to remove all sadness.
62. It may be said that men fall asleep daily with an audacity that would seem incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of danger.
Ignorance is the worst disease of humanity.
63. Pleasure wears us out. Work strengthens us. Let's choose.
A decision that can change the course of your life.
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64. The panting lover bent over his beauty has the look of a dying man caressing his grave.
The weight of the delivery of a heart in love.
65. What a boring writer! A dusty digger of chronicles! An annoying bunch of jumbled descriptions.
There are writers who do not go with our tastes.
66. Life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. This one would like to suffer in front of the heater, and that one thinks that he would improve by the window.
An interesting way of seeing life.
67. Being a servile man has always seemed to me a repugnant thing.
Despising the idea of adapting to social norms.
68. Laughter is satanic, therefore it is profoundly human.
Laughter is a natural human instinct.
69. Nations are like certain families: only in spite of themselves do they have great men.
A way of relating nations.
70. The most beautiful of the Devil's plays is to persuade you that he does not exist.
Many believers claim that this is the devil's play par excellence.
71. There are only three beings who are worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. Know, kill, create.
Each one offers valuable things to his society.
72. Every minute we feel crushed by the idea and the feeling of time.
For those who do not know how to live, time is a sentence.
73. I am like a painter condemned by a mocking god to paint, Ah! About the darkness; O cook of funeral appetites, I boil and eat my heart.
A form of self-perception about his works.
74. Time cannot be forgotten except by making use of it.
The way to master time is by learning from it and accepting it.
75. Our sins are stubborn, our regrets cowardly.
It's never too late to do the things you want.
76. Remembering is just a new form of suffering.
The memory of what could not be is the sorrow that drags on in the future.
77. In a social act, everyone enjoys the others.
About enjoying the misfortunes of others.
78. What is not slightly deformed presents a useless appearance.
Perfection is in things that are strange and natural.
79. You have given me your clay and I have turned it into gold.
As the saying goes: 'The trash of some is the treasure of others'.
80. Modernity is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, half of art.
Modernity is what happens now. But it is not everything.
81. The years leave only our members disabled, and we have warped our passions.
The passing of the years does not have to affect who we are.
82. Those who say 'I'm unlucky' are the ones who haven't had enough success yet and ignore it.
That important to celebrate every win, no matter how small it may seem. This motivates us to keep going.
83. A succession of small wills achieves a great result.
The objectives are achieved through small conquered goals.
84. Never give up on your dreams, the sane know nothing of the admirable dream of a madman!
All great things start as dreams.
85. The one who never woke up in an anonymous bed, next to a face that he will never see again, and he left a brothel at dawn, wanting to throw himself into a river out of physical disgust at existence, he is lost something.
A sample of his extravagant behavior, which he exceeded in the immoral.
86. A charm is a bottle of wine, a wife is a bottle of wine.
For Baudelaire, wine was something incredibly valuable.
87. Genius is nothing more than childhood recovered at will.
The ability to walk through all our imagination without limits.
88. Fatality has a certain elasticity that is usually called human freedom.
Freedom can easily be transformed into decadence.
89. If the word doesn't exist, make it up; but first make sure it doesn't exist.
Encouraging us to do new and original things.
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90. We make ourselves pay for our confessions at length, And we joyfully enter the muddy road, believing with vile tears to wash away all our stains.
Even if we confess our bad deeds, we must still pay the price for them.
91. The beautiful is always strange.
The things we love have a touch of weirdness.
92. Consenting to be decorated is to recognize the State or the prince the right to judge us, enlighten us, etc.
A criticism of the pressure to follow social standards when they recognize the work you do.
93. Look no further for my heart; the beasts have devoured him.
There are people who cannot dedicate themselves to others, because they are too hurt to do so.
94. What is the art? Prostitution.
A strange way of seeing art.
95. We feed our kind regrets, As beggars feed their misery.
Remorse is the worst weight you can carry, as it is not easy to get rid of them.
96. A healthy man can go two days without eating, but not without poetry.
Culture is an essential part of any person.
97. The marvelous surrounds us and soaks us like the atmosphere, and yet we do not see it.
There are amazing things happening around us, but we are too blind to see it.
98. To deftly handle a language is to practice some kind of evocative sorcery.
Never underestimate the importance of learning a new language.
99. There is no sweeter pleasure than surprising a man by giving him more than he expects.
Making them see your full potential.
100. Hold on and persist; the present pain will serve you another time.
Many lessons can be learned from painful moments.