Quote

What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all its poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes.

Charles Baudelaire

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Charles Baudelaire
Age: 46 †
Born: 1821
Born: April 9
Died: 1867
Died: August 30
Art Critic
Author
Essayist
Literary Critic
Poet
Translator
Writer
Paris
France
Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire-Dufaÿs
Charles Pierre Baudelaire
Men
Along
Prostitution
Love
Divine
Passes
Small
Compared
Call
Unexpected
Orgy
Comes
Stranger
Incomparable
Soul
Charity
Ineffable
Giving
Entire
Restricted
Thing
Poetry
Feeble

More quotes by Charles Baudelaire

Image
Life swarms with innocent monsters.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
A silent mouth is sweet to hear.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
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
Image
Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Where ever I am not is the place where I am myself.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Where are the dogs going? you people who pay so little attention ask. They are going about their business. And they are very punctilious, without wallets, notes, and without briefcases.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health beside the window.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
One must work, if not from inclination, at least out of despair — since it proves, on close examination, that work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
A book is a garden, a party, a company by the way.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
If the word doesn't exist, invent it but first be sure it doesn't exist.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.
Charles Baudelaire
Image
I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
Charles Baudelaire