Charles Baudelaire: Citations en anglais

“Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it.”

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.”

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters… But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”

“I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.”

“Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?”

“The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;
We find delight in the most loathsome things;
Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,
And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.”

“Through the unknown, we'll find the new.”

“It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. As it turns out, work is less boring than amusing oneself.”

“Ant-swarming city, city abounding in dreams,
Where ghosts in broad daylight accost the passerby!”

“There is in the word, in the logos, something sacred which forbids us to gamble with it. To handle a language skilfuly is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”

“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.”

“The beautiful is always bizarre.”

“Remembering is only a new form of suffering.”

“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”

“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.”

“Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.”