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By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

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
Knowledge
Infinitely
Nature
Primitive
Men
Regions
Civilized
Necessity
Finds
Encyclopedic
Civilization
Specialization
Small
Confined

More quotes by Charles Baudelaire

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Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.
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The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear.
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I will drop into your chest like a vegetal ambrosia. I will be the grain that regenerates the cruelly plowed furrow. Poetry will be born of our intimate union. A god we shall create together, and we shall soar heavenward like sunbeams, perfumes, butterflies, birds, and all winged things.
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However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.
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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.
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To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.
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A work of art should be like a well-planned crime.
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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.
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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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If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.
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It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
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A silent mouth is sweet to hear.
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The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
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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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My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.
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A book is a garden, a party, a company by the way.
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Those men get along best with women who can get along best without them.
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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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The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
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In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is not nearly so large as people think.
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