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There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.

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
Giving
Men
Sweeter
Hopes
Surprise
Pleasure

More quotes by Charles Baudelaire

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How bittersweet it is, on winter's night, To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire, As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light, Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
Charles Baudelaire
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This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.
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Music fathoms the sky.
Charles Baudelaire
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Comme l'imagination a cre e le monde, elle le gouverne. Because imagination created the world, it governs it.
Charles Baudelaire
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Quand me me Dieu n'existerait pas, la religion serait encore sainte et divineDieu est le seul e tre qui, pour re gner, n'ait me me pas besoin d'exister. Even if God did not exist, religion would still be holyand divine.God isthe only being who, inorder toreign, need not even exist.
Charles Baudelaire
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If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible.
Charles Baudelaire
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There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
Charles Baudelaire
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The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous but we do not notice it.
Charles Baudelaire
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Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
Charles Baudelaire
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Everything for me becomes allegory
Charles Baudelaire
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You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed.
Charles Baudelaire
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France at the dinner table in faraway places but here, among ourselves, in the family, let us face the facts: France is not poetic to tell the truth, she even feels a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
Charles Baudelaire
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The People adore authority.
Charles Baudelaire
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There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Charles Baudelaire
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The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.
Charles Baudelaire
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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.
Charles Baudelaire
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The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.
Charles Baudelaire
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Even if it were proven that God didn't exist, Religion would still be Saintly and Divine.
Charles Baudelaire
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The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.
Charles Baudelaire
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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.
Charles Baudelaire