“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”
Charles Baudelaire“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”—Charles Baudelaire “The second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he is the good guy”—Ken Ammi”
Charles Baudelaire“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”
Charles Baudelaire“The beautiful is always bizarre.”
Charles Baudelaire“To be away from home and yet find oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet remain hidden from the world.”
Charles Baudelaire“I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.”
Charles Baudelaire, Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du mal: A Bilingual Edition“Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.”
Charles Baudelaire“France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.”
Charles Baudelaire“Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.”
Charles Baudelaire“Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.”
Charles Baudelaire“Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected.”
Charles Baudelaire