Character: Baudelaire. Page 1

A person who is unable to express any, the most elusive thought, is not a writer. The inexpressible does not exist.

It is very useful to show secular people how much labor is worth that luxury item that is called Poetry.

Inspiration is nothing more than a reward for everyday work.

We are waiting for winter tomorrow, summer passed away yesterday.

Labor strengthens. We need to make a choice ... To recover from everything - from poverty, from illness and from melancholy - we lack only one thing - the love of work.

Humanity teaches high laws.

It is impossible to look through any newspaper in any day, month or year and not find in every line the evidence of the most terrible human perversion, simultaneously boasting of its honesty, kindness, generosity and with the most audacious assurances of progress and civilization.

With the exception of Chateaubriand, Balzac, Stendhal, Mérimée, Flaubert and Gaultier, all modern stuff terrifies me. Your academies are horror, your liberals are horror, virtues are horror, vices are horror, your hasty style is horror, progress is horror.

I can hardly imagine a Beauty that is not associated with Grief.

If criticism wants to be fair, or, in other words, if it wants to justify its purpose, it must be passionate, partisan, militant, it must proceed from a position that is purely individual and at the same time one that opens up the broadest horizons possible.