Abolishes of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishes of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people.

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire

A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times the experiment was a failure; but on the eleventh it succeeded all too well.

— Charles Baudelaire

Always be a poet, even in prose.

— Charles Baudelaire

A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.

— Charles Baudelaire

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

— Charles Baudelaire

And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

— Charles Baudelaire

And yet to wine, to opium even, I prefer the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;and in the wasteland of desire your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

— Charles Baudelaire

Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve

— Charles Baudelaire

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

— Charles Baudelaire