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

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.

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...

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...

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...

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

Music fathoms the sky.

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

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

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

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

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,...

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

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.

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

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....

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...

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

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

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...

The Beautiful is always strange.