Charles Baudelaire

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.

The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.

There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

Even if it were proven that God didn't exist, Religion would still be Saintly and Divine.

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.