Charles Baudelaire Quotes

What is art? Prostitution.

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

There exist only three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create.

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

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.

True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.

A Dandy does nothing.

Every idea is endowed of itself with immortal life, like a human being. All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter: molecules do not constitute form.

To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing.