"Life has but one true charm: the charm of the game. But what if we’re indifferent to whether we win or lose?"

"Extract the eternal from the ephemeral."

"What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?"

"The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance."

"I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed."

"I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust."

"A multitude of small delights constitute happiness"

"Even when she walks one would believe that she dances."

"Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art."

"You walk on corpses, beauty, undismayed."

"He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window."

"The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day; But on the ground, among the hooting crowds, He cannot walk, his wings are in the way."

"My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it."

"I have felt the wind on the wing of madness."

"I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge."

"As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life."

"I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination."

"Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious."

"The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, & which life reveals is the most living proof of our immortality."

"But the true voyagers are only those who leave Just to be leaving; hearts light, like balloons, They never turn aside from their fatality And without knowing why they always say: "Let's go!"

"To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery."

"It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish."

"Inspiration comes of working every day."

"It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not."

"An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom."

"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."

"Through the Unknown, we'll find the New"

"All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation."

"Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage."

"Nothing is as tedious as the limping days, When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom"

"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."