Charles Baudelaire

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.

There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.

The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

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.

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal.

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.

Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will.

Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

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.

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

What do I care if you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad!

Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.

Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.