There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.
In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.
Drink wine, drink poetry, drink virtue.
The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.
Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.
What is art? Prostitution.
The true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling . . . and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'.
It is unfortunately very true that, without leisure and money, love can be no more than an orgy of the common man. Instead of being a sudden impulse full of ardor and reverie, it becomes a distastefully utilitarian affair.
A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.
The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before he is defeated.
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam, Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
Strangeness is an ingredient necessary in beauty.
It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.
True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.
We revel in the laxness of the path we take.
I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.
Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.
It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.
With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
Comme l'imagination a cre e le monde, elle le gouverne. Because imagination created the world, it governs it.
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
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