Charles Baudelaire

The world only goes round by misunderstanding.

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

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

Every man who refuses to accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

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

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.