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There are some temptations which are so strong that they must be virtues.

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
Temptation
Virtue
Strong
Must
Temptations
Virtues

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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.
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Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?
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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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The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
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I am the wound and the knife! I am the slap and the cheek! I am the limbs and the rack, And the victim and the executioner! I am the vampire of my own heart.
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I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
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The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance We find delight in the most loathsome things Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.
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The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
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What do I care if you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad!
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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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I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.
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It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
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