The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.
Remembering is only a new form of suffering.
Forest, I fear you! In my ruined heart your roaring wakens the same agony as in cathedrals when the organ moans and from the depths I hear that I am damned.
The world only goes round by misunderstanding.
Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.
Music fathoms the sky.
Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.
I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.
However incoherent a human existence may be, human unity is not bothered by it.
There is a word, in a verb, something sacred which forbids us from using it recklessly. To handle a language cunningly is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.
I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.
Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject, nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling.
There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.
Even if it were proven that God didn’t exist, Religion would still be Saintly and Divine.
It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.