Charles Baudelaire

"Every day has gifts wrapped in it if you know how to unwrap them."

"We live in succession, we live in parts, wholes."

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds."

"No one is so miserable as he who longs to be someone other than the person he is."

"The only way to deal with the world is to affirm it completely."

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

"I love the beautiful season when the sky rains fire and the air is transformed into a golden dust."

"One should always be drunk. That's all that matters. But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, choose your own. But get drunk."

"The poet is like the prince of the clouds who laughs at archers and scoffs at the crowds below."

"I adore the beautiful disorder of the mind that poetry creates."

"The greatest miracle of love is the ability to cure. But the greatest tragedy is that it cannot prevent suffering."

"Genius is nothing more than childhood recovered by an act of will."

"Even if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."

"The ugliest occupation is that of the prostitute, yet she is no worse than the merchant who sells his soul."

"I love the muted light of autumn afternoons; they teach me the value of transience."

"To be just, one must first understand the suffering of others."

"Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things."

"The perfume of flowers is nature's poetry without words."

"I flee the crowd; solitude is my palace and my kingdom."

"Those who do not accept mystery in their lives will never find truth."

"The dance of passion and reason creates the music of the soul."

"Darkness illuminates more than light ever could."

"To love is to risk the possibility of becoming nothing."

"The greatest freedom is the freedom from the opinions of others."

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was an invincible summer within me."

"The beautiful people are not those born with beautiful faces, but those who understand beauty itself."

"Time is a merchant who never gives credit; we must pay him in advance with our actions."

"Every man has known the torment of a great and sudden fear."