If the word doesn’t exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn’t exist.

La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.”(“The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.”)

Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a...

The beautiful is always bizarre.

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor...

Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque...

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

The mainspring of genius is curiosity.

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

Il me semble que je serais toujours bien la ou je ne suis pas.It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not.

Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?

I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

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...