seen in alt.quotations

[autographedcat]

You can live three days without bread--without poetry, never...you need
art.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and
cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural
equilibrium of the ideal. You understand its function , you gentlemen of
the bourgeoisie--whether lawgivers or businessmen--when the seventh or
eighth hour strikes and you bend your tired head towards the embers of
your hearth or the cushions of your armchair. That is the time when a
keener desire and a more active reverie would refresh you after your
daily labors.
--Charles Baudelaire "To the Bourgeois" - The Salon of 1846 (1846)