Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Baudelaire observes that all beauty contains both eternal and fleeting elements, the universal and the particular.
In plain terms
Beauty mixes the timeless with the temporary, the general with the specific.
What can you take from it?
Appreciate both the lasting and the momentary in art.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • creative writing

Putting it to work

  • balance timeless themes with details
  • highlight contrast

Questions to consider

  • What makes something feel eternal?
  • How does the particular enrich beauty?

Another view

The dichotomy may oversimplify complex works.

More from Charles Baudelaire

  1. Tout ce qui plait a une raison de plaire, et mepriser les attroupements de ceux qui s'egarent n'est pas le moyen de les ramener ou ils devraient etre.

    Permalink to quote #1
  2. Nous avons psychologise comme les fous, qui augmentent leur folie en s'efforcant de la comprendre.

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. Tu m'as donne ta boue et j'en ai fait de l'or.

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

    John Kenneth GalbraithJohn Kenneth Galbraith quote #9
  2. Music is the exaltation of the mind derived from things eternal, bursting forth in sound.

    Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas quote #15
  3. The Greeks were the classicists of antiquity and they are still today the preeminent classicists. What marked all they did, the classic stamp, is a direct simp…

    Edith HamiltonEdith Hamilton quote #15