quote · Words worth keeping
Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.
Approximate historical placement: c. 1844 AD · industrial
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Charles Baudelaire
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate historical placement: c. 1844 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1821 to 1867; Wikidata Q501, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q501 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 237845; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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