"La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beaut Luxe, calme et volupt There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure."

"The Beautiful is always strange."

"Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently."

"I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy."

"So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk."

"Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry."

"And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!"

"The Devil's hand directs our every move - / the things we loathed become the things we love"

"Music fathoms the sky."

"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."

"And yet to wine, to opium even, I prefer the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself; and in the wasteland of desire your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst."

"In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times."

"Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices."

"I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws."

"The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished."

"I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy."

"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."

"How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering."

"Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing."

"I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy."

"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."

"How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering."

"Nature is a temple, where the living Columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; Man walks within these groves of symbols, each Of which regards him as a kindred thing."

"In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!"

"The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality."

"Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams."

"Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?"

"If rape or arson, poison or the knife Has wove no pleasing patterns in the stuff Of this drab canvas we accept as life - It is because we are not bold enough!"

"With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk."

"Abolishers of the soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell, they, certainly, are interested. At all events, they are people who fear to live again--lazy people."

"Go then, a starveling girl With no perfume or pearls, Only your nudity O my beauty!"

"But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?"

"Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires Sisyphean patience for its song, Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short and Art is long."

"I know that pain is the one nobility / upon which Hell itself cannot encroach"

"I am but little disposed to put things in writing. One almost always regrets doing so."

"Genius is childhood recovered at will."

"It's the devil who pulls the strings that make us dance"

"The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it."

"Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves."

"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."

"Ant swarming City City full of dreams Where in broad day the specter tugs your sleeve"

"The child, in love with prints and maps, Holds the whole world in his vast appetite. How large the earth is under the lamplight! But in the eyes of memory, how the world is cramped!"

"Fruit free of any bruises, not yet broken open, / With flesh so firm and smooth, it cried out to be eaten!"

"Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will."

"And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year;"

"The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart)."

"Wandering aimlessly, broken by my thoughts, Which slowly sharpened daggers at my heart"

"Scent, sound or sight, beneficent, malign – Who cares if you’re a blessing or a curse, So long as you bring light,"

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

"Do you hate people?” “I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around."