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There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.

— Charles Baudelaire Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Il n'est pas de plaisir plus doux que de surprendre un homme en lui donnant plus qu'il n'espère.

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

XXVIII: "La Fausse Monnaie"

More quotes by Charles Baudelaire

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

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

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.

L'art romantique (1869)

This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.

Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.

We have psychologized like the insane, who aggravate their madness in struggling to understand it.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Baudelaire (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.