Charles Baudelaire

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old.

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist.

The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.

Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

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