That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity – that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are a essential part and characteristic of beauty.
Charles BaudelaireRead
Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Baudelaire expresses the idea that newspapers are filled with disturbing news, making them repulsive to him.
In this quote, Charles Baudelaire critiques the nature of newspapers, suggesting that they are essentially a collection of negative and horrifying stories that mar the human experience. He portrays a sense of revulsion towards the very act of reading newspapers, implying that the constant exposure to such distressful news can lead to a moral and emotional disturbance in an 'innocent' person.
Themes
NewspaperHorrorDisgustNewsCritique
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of media on mental health.
More from Charles Baudelaire
All quotes →The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
Charles BaudelaireRead
Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.
Charles BaudelaireRead
There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.
Charles BaudelaireRead
The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.
Charles BaudelaireRead
I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.
Charles BaudelaireRead
Similar quotes
It never occurred to him to be spiritually won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality. . . . But this was a kind of modern meanness to which Syme could not sink even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man, he was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not coward enough to admire it.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another.
David SouterRead
Life is elsewhere. Cross frontiers. Fly away.
Salman RushdieRead
We're taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they're of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration.
Alanis MorissetteRead
To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for astonishment to people used to thinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise men of India have not been concerned with technological applications of this knowledge arises from the circumstance that technology is but one of innumerable ways of applying it.
Alan WattsRead
For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.
Thomas HuxleyRead