76 quotes
There is no form of rational and assured government but aristocracy. Monarchy or republic based upon democracy are equally absurd and feeble—an immense nausea of placards.
Journaux intimes (1864)
What is that sad, black island like a pall?
Why, Cytherea, famed in many a book,
The Eldorado of old-stagers. Look:
It's but a damned poor country after all!
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
I am a cemetery loathed by the moon.
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
In times of old when Nature in her glad excess
Brought forth such living marvels as no more are seen,
I should have loved to dwell with a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat about the feet of a queen.
Salon de 1859 (1859)
If rape, poison, daggers, arson
Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs
The banal canvas of our pitiable lives,
It is because our souls have not enough boldness.
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes so embarrassing that I suffered, upon losing it, a little less emotion than if I had mislaid, while out on a stroll, my calling-card.
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)
Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, and coldly determined to seek the means of expressing passion in the most visible manner. In this dual character, be it said in passing, we find the two distinguishing marks of the most substantial geniuses, extreme geniuses.
These tall and handsome ships, swaying imperceptibly on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships, with their inactive, nostalgic appearance, don't they say to us in a speechless tongue: When do we cast off for happiness?
Journaux intimes (1864)
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.
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
"Vegetal ambrosia, precious grain scattered
By the eternal Sower, I shall descend in you
So that from our love there will be born poetry,
Which will spring up toward God like a rare flower!"
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
Genius is only childhood recovered at will, childhood now gifted to express itself with the faculties of manhood and with the analytic mind that allows him to give order to the heap of unwittingly hoarded material.
Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863)
There exist but three respectable beings: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill and to create. Other men are taxable and exploitable, made for the stable, that is to say, to exercise so called professions.
Journaux intimes (1864)
Satan be praised! Glory to you on High
where once you reigned in Heaven, and in the
Pit where now you dream in taciturn defeat!
Grant that my soul, one day, beneath the Tree
of Knowledge, meet you when above your brow
its branches, like a second Temple, spread!
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
Ah! miserable dog, if I had offered you a package of excrement, you would have smelled it with delight and perhaps devoured it. In this, poor companion of my sad life, you are like the public, to whom one must never present delicate perfumes, which exasperate them, but only carefully chosen filth.
Les paradis artificiels (1860)
One night, the soul of wine was singing in the flask:
"O man, dear disinherited! to you I sing
This song full of light and of brotherhood
From my prison of glass with its scarlet wax seals."
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
God would be unjust if we were not guilty.
Misattributed