Good sense tells us that earthly things are rare and fleeting, and that true reality exists only in dreams. To draw sustenance from happiness- natural or artificial - you must first have the courage to swallow it; and those who perhaps most merit happiness are precisely those on whom felicity, as mortals conceive it, always acts as a vomitive.

The beautiful is always bizarre.

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity.

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.

What a mysterious faculty is that queen of the faculties!

Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.