Charles Baudelaire Quotes About Soul

Quotes about: Soul

• It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Imperfect Things, Poetry

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

• Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Life, Men, History

  Charles Baudelaire (1925). “Les fleurs de mal: Petits poèmes en prose, Les paradis artificiels”

• Within the bottle's depths, the wine's soul sang one night. Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Wine, Night, Soul

• I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Gambling, Soul, Nuisance

• Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones, its legs in the air like a woman in need burning its wedding poisons like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs, I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound, but I touch my body in vain to find the wound. I am the vampire of my own heart, one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter who can no longer smile. Am I dead? I must be dead.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Summer, Morning, Laughter

• The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or some one else, as he chooses. [...] The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. [...] What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire...to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Thoughtful, Love Is

  Charles Baudelaire, “Crowds”

• From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Sweet, Eye, Cat

  Charles Baudelaire, James N McGowan (2008). “The Flowers of Evil”, p.105, Oxford Paperbacks

• What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all its poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love Is, Men, Giving

  Charles Baudelaire, Louise Varèse (1970). “Paris Spleen, 1869”, p.20, New Directions Publishing

• Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Ambition, Miracle

• The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors, so much money bestowed on men without souls and without education.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Education, Art, Children

• In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one's eyes. It becomes its symbol.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Soul, Perception

• My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Music, Travel, Men

• I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Moving, Thinking, House

• Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Spring, Ambition, Cities

  Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.30

• The more delicate and ambitious the soul, the further do dreams estrange it from possible things.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Dream, Soul, Ambitious

  Charles Baudelaire (1925). “Les fleurs de mal: Petits poèmes en prose, Les paradis artificiels”

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