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Quotes from Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) — Charles Baudelaire

1821–1867 France

← All quotes by Charles Baudelaire

18 quotes

I think there can be few examples of a life as dilapidated as mine.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Free man, you will always cherish the sea.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

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

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Although we have a heart for the work,
Art is long and time is short.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Ô douleur! ô douleur! Le Temps mange la vie.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

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

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

It is the hour when the swarm of malevolent dreams
Makes sun-browned adolescents writhe upon their pillows.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

There, all is order and beauty only,
Splendor, peace, and pleasure.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Hypocrite reader — my likeness — my brother!

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Nature is a temple where living columns
Let slip from time to time uncertain words;
Man finds his way through forests of symbols
Which regard him with familiar gazes.

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Soon we will plunge into the cold darkness;
Farewell, vivid brightness of our too-short summers!

Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

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)

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 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)

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)

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)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Baudelaire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.