"There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more fertile, more gloomy, or more dazzling, than a window lighted by a candle. What we can see in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind the panes of a window. In that dark or luminous hollow, life lives, life dreams, life suffers."
"It seems to me that I should always be happy if I were somewhere else"
"What use are palaces to me?"
"Dreams, forever dreams! And the more the soul is aspiring and fastidious, the more our dreams outstrip the possible."
Baudelaire's poems don't need me to review them; they're funny, scathing, biting, intelligent, dismaying, wonderful. But I do recommend this edition for anyone who'd like to read them in French, but needs a bit of help every now and then. Scarfe's translations are generally quite straightforward, and the book itself is beautiful. I don't know how to describe it except to say this is the highest quality paper I've ever rubbed between my fingers.