Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Baudelaire suggests that true beauty cannot exist without sorrow, and that the most perfect masculine beauty is Satan, echoing Milton.
In plain terms
Beauty and sorrow are linked, and the ultimate masculine beauty is likened to Satan.
What can you take from it?
Recognize that beauty often contains darkness.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • philosophical debate

Putting it to work

  • exploring dark themes in art

Questions to consider

  • Why do we associate beauty with darkness?
  • Can beauty be pure?

Another view

The claim is highly subjective and may alienate readers.

More from Charles Baudelaire

  1. Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pederaste.

    Permalink to quote #54
  2. Ce qu'il y a d'enivrant dans le mauvais gout, c'est le plaisir aristocratique de deplaire.

    Permalink to quote #56
  3. L'amour ressemblait fort a une torture ou a une operation chirurgicale.

    Permalink to quote #53

Related quotes

  1. Beauty ... is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.

    Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins quote #21
  2. Imagine my glimpses at that clock as the gropings of a spiritual eye which seeks to adjust its vision to an exact focus. The moment the focus is reached the ob…

    James JoyceJames Joyce quote #56
  3. -You know what Aquinas says: The three things requisite for beauty are, integrity, a wholeness, symmetry and radiance. Some day I will expand that sentence int…

    James JoyceJames Joyce quote #57