Charles Pierre Baudelaire, (1821-1867), French Poet Quotes

The man who says his prayers in the evening is a captain posting his sentries. After that, he can sleep.

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

I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, rd of January, , I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.

What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.

The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear.

We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.

The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.

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.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.