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Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.

Charles Baudelaire

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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
Noble
Lounging
Eternity
Sphinx
Attitude
Gaze
Wise
Attitudes
Upon
Sand
Nothing
Desert
Great
Cat
Like
Calm

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Love is a taste for prostitution. In fact, there is no noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to Prostitution.
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It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
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The immense profundity of thought in vulgar locutions, like holes dug by generations of ants.
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In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.
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Through the Unknown, we'll find the New
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I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
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Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
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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.
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To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
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I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
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That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.
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Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally goodness is always the product of some art.
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Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, and all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.
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I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
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He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.
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Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.
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Amer savoir, celui qu'on tire du voyage! Bitter is the knowledge gained in travelling.
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Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
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