Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
The insatiable thirst for everything that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.
There is no dream of love, however ideal it may be, which does not end up with a fat, greedy baby hanging from the breast.
The more one works, the better one works, and the more one wants to work. The more one produces, the more fertile one grows.
As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work
The insatiable thirst for everything which lies beyond, and which life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.
There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.
The true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling . . . and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'.
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
La' , tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute , Luxe, calme et volupte . There where all is order and beauty. Lush, calm and voluptuous.
Man loves man so much that when he flees the city, it is still to seek the crowd, that is, to rebuild the city in the country.
Everything that gives pleasure has its reason. To scorn the mobs of those who go astray is not the means to bring them around.
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.
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.
Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange, Vivre est un mal. Once our heart has been harvested once, Life becomes miserable.
Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.
Drowsing, they take the noble attitude of a great sphinx, who, in a desert land, sleeps always, dreaming dreams that have no end.
Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.
Beware of all the paradoxical in love. It is simplicity which saves, it is simplicity which brings happiness...Love should be love.
Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror.
Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character.
The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.
What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.
It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats. A cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury, cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures.
Modernity signifies the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art of which the other half is the eternal and the immutable.
Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.
Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.
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.
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.
Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning. It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin.
One must work, if not from inclination, at least out of despair — since it proves, on close examination, that work is less boring than amusing oneself.
I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.
My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!
It is this admirable and immortal instinct for beauty which causes us to regard the earth and its spectacles as a glimpse, a correspondence of the beyond.
Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.
In art, there is one thing which does not receive sufficient attention. The element which is left to the human will is not nearly so large as people think.
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.
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.
In order for the artist to have a world to express he must first be situated in this world, oppressed or oppressing, resigned or rebellious, a man among men.
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.
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!
Thanks be to God, Who gives us sufferingas sacred remedy for all our sins,that best and purest essence which preparesthe strong in spirit for divine delights!
By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.
La volupte unique et supre" me de l'amour g|"t dans la certitude de faire le mal. The unique, supreme pleasure of love consists in the certainty of doing evil.