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!

I have felt the wind on the wing of madness.

Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father,Your mother, your sister, or your brother?I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.Your friends?Now you use a word whose meaning I have...

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.

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuéesQui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said. The first ten times...

Always be a poet, even in prose.

My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.

Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial – you must first have the courage to...

—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!

«¡No renuncies jamás a tus sueños, los cuerdos nada saben del sueño admirable de un loco!»

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

Ant swarming CityCity full of dreamsWhere in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve

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.