God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist.

What is art? Prostitution.

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.

Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty!

The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it is the working of fate; good is always the product of an art.

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

Hypocrite reader my fellow my brother!

It would perhaps be nice to be alternately the victim and the executioner.

Music fathoms the sky.

There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.

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.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

We are all born marked for evil.

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.