Charles Baudelaire, portrait by Étienne Carjat - Print

“Tears fall in my heart as rain falls on the town.”

“Beauty is always strange. I do not mean that it is deliberately, coldly strange, for in that case it would be a monster off the rails of life. I say that it always contains a little strangeness, a naive strangeness.”

“Art is the reflection that the dazzled human soul gives back of the splendor of the beautiful.”

“If the world were clear, art would not be.”

“Sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures which master one's sight. They flood one's consciousness.”

“Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.”

“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.”

“The sky is pretty like an angel.”

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

“Only children know what they are looking for.”

“Perfumes, colors, and sounds respond to one another.”

“But where are the snows of yesteryear?”

“Art hovers around the truth, but with the firm intention not to burn itself.”

“Genius is childhood rediscovered at will.”

“Art is the premonition of truth.”

“To create is always to speak of childhood.”

“One must be absolutely modern.”

“One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.”