Charles Baudelaire: Citations en anglais (Page 2)

“What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?”

“I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.”

“A multitude of small delights constitute happiness”

“You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.”

“Even when she walks one would believe that she dances.”

“Evil happens without effort, naturally, inevitably; good is always the product of skill.”

“The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.”

“I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.”

“He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.”

“As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”

“I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.”

“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.”

“We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.”

“I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.”

“Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious.”

“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!”

“The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality.”

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”

“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.”