The dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.

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

To be a great man and a saint to oneself, that's the only important thing.

In literature as in ethics, there is danger, as well as glory, in being subtle. Aristocracy isolates us.

The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before he is defeated.

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.