That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.
I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.
I am the wound and the knife! I am the slap and the cheek! I am the limbs and the rack, And the victim and the executioner! I am the vampire of my own heart.
The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.
All the visible universe is nothing but a shop of images and signs.
Where ever I am not is the place where I am myself.
A Dandy does nothing.
Life swarms with innocent monsters.
Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, and all of summer’s stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.
I watch the springs, the summers, the autumns; And when comes the winter snow monotonous, I shut all the doors and shutters To build in the night my fairy palace.
There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.
We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.
Today I had a strange warning. I felt the wind of insanity brush my mind.
I throw fresh seeds out. Who knows what survives?
Blessed art Thou, Lord, who giveth suffering As a divine remedy for our impurities.
We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.
Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.
An artist is only an artist on condition that he neglects no aspect of his dual nature. This dualism is the power of being oneself and someone else at one and the same time.
If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible.
Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.