Charles Baudelaire. Paris spleen (№ 419509)

For two weeks I sat locked in my room, surrounded by books that were fashionable at the time (sixteen or seventeen years ago); I'm talking about books that talk about the art of making people happy, wise, and rich at twenty-four o'clock. And so I have digested, or rather swallowed, all the fabrications of all these interpreters of universal happiness, both those who advise all the poor to become slaves, and those who assure them that they are all deposed kings. It should come as no surprise that as a result I found myself in a state close to fainting or insanity.