Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-67) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal, expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire’s highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé among many others. He is credited with coining the term “modernity” to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
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It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Work
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain he would get well if he were by the window.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Reality, Opportunities
Inspiration comes of working every day.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Work
A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.
—Charles Baudelaire
There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Beauty
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
Topics: Soul, Gambling
Our religion is itself profoundly sad—a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language—so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
—Charles Baudelaire
Every man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Acceptance
There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Awareness
The habit of doing one’s duty drives away fear.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
Nothing can be done except little by little.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: One Step at a Time
Time is an avid gambler who has no need to cheat to win every time.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Time Management
In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Procrastination, Inaction, Getting Going
Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.
—Charles Baudelaire
Topics: Thought
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