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,...