Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable. – Charles Baudelaire
There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan. Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent. – Charles Baudelaire
The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due, not only to the beauty it can be clothed in, but also to its essential quality of being the present. – Charles Baudelaire
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me. – Charles Baudelaire