Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam, Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

Everything for me becomes allegory

The vices of man, as full of horror as one might suppose them to be, contain the proof (if in nothing else but their infinitely expandable nature) of his taste for the infinite; only, it is a taste that often takes a wrong turn.

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

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.

I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.