Charles Baudelaire on the Pleasures We Derive

The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but also as past, for its historical value. The same goes for the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty in which it may be clothed, but also from its essential quality of being present.

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), French poet, critic. The Painter of Modern Life, I "Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness," (1863).