In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah.

Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.

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

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

We all have the republican spirit in our veins, like syphilis in our bones. We are democratized and venerealized.

Everything for me becomes allegory

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