Inspiration comes of working every day.

Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again–lazy people.

I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

And yetto wine, to opium even, I preferthe elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself;and in the wasteland of desireyour eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.

Time to get drunk!Don’t be martyred slaves of Time,Get drunk!Stay drunk!On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!

He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why...

A soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless and sometimes such a nuisance, that the loss of it disturbed me less than if I had lost my visiting card while taking a walk.

SpleenJe suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux,Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,S’ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d’autres bêtes.Rien ne peut l’égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,Ni...

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in...

And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, “Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

Music fathoms the sky.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.

I walk alone, absorbed in my fantastic play, — Fencing with rhymes, which, parrying nimbly, back away; Tripping on words, as on rough paving in the street, Or bumping into verses I long had dreamed...

Le serpent qui danseQue j’aime voir, chère indolente,De ton corps si beau,Comme une étoffe vacillante,Miroiter la peau!Sur ta chevelure profondeAux acres parfums,Mer odorante et vagabondeAux flots bleus et bruns,Comme un navire qui s’éveilleAu vent du...

Le ChatViens, mon beau chat, sur mon coeur amoureux; Retiens les griffes de ta patte, Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux, Mêlés de métal et d’agate. Lorsque mes doigts caressent à loisir Ta tête...

L’étude du beau est un duel où l’artiste crie de frayeur avant d’être vaincu.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

To fornicate is to aspire to enter into another; the artist never emerges from himself.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days–but not without poetry.

Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience,...

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.

the Devil’s hand directs our every movethe things we loathed become the things we love;day by day we drop through stinking shadesquite undeterred on our descent to Hell.

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,That fair, sweet, summer morn!At a turn in the path a foul carcassOn a gravel strewn bed,Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,Burning...

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

À une passanteLa rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait. Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse, Une femme passa, d’une main fastueuse Soulevant, balançant le feston et l’ourlet;Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue....

Il était tard; ainsi qu’une médaille neuveLa pleine lune s’étalait,Et la solennité de la nuit, comme un fleuveSur Paris dormant ruisselait.

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.

The Beautiful is always strange.

I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn...

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,that soft summer morninground a turning in the path,the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,its legs in the air like a woman in needburning its...

Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.

Les hibouxSous les ifs noirs qui les abritent,Les hiboux se tiennent rangés,Ainsi que des dieux étrangers,Dardant leur oeil rouge. Ils méditent.Sans remuer ils se tiendrontJusqu’à l’heure mélancoliqueOù, poussant le soleil oblique,Les ténèbres s’établiront.Leur attitude au...

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel’sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my...

To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.

Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom

It’s time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!The land rots; we shall sail into the night;if now the sky and sea are black as inkour hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.Only when we...

La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles; L’homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles Qui l’observent avec des regards familiers.

It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.

If rape or arson, poison or the knifeHas wove no pleasing patterns in the stuffOf this drab canvas we accept as life -It is because we are not bold enough!

To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity.

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requiresSisyphean patience for its song,Time, Hippocrates remarked, is shortand Art is long.

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal’s heart).

On peut chercher dans Dieu le complice et l’ami qui manquent toujours. Dieu est l’éternel confident dans cette tragédie dont chacun est le héros.

Thanks be to God, Who gives us sufferingas sacred remedy for all our sins,that best and purest essence which preparesthe strong in spirit for divine delights!