We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized. – Charles Baudelaire
To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons. – Charles Baudelaire
Any healthy man can go without food for two days – but not without poetry. – Charles Baudelaire
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with mans physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed. – Charles Baudelaire
And now it has risen above the massive and lofty tree, and throws its pleasant shadow down upon the earth—pleasant shadow that paces along the meadows, leaving behind a greater brilliancy on tree, and grass, and hedge, and flower than what, for a moment, it had eclipsed. – William Smith, Gravenhurst, or Thoughts on Good and Evil, 1862