The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently.

If wine disappeared from human production, I believe there would be, in the health and intellect of the planet, a void, a deficiency far more terrible than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is made responsible. Is it not reasonable to suggest that people that never drink wine, whether naive or doctrinaire, are fools or hypocrites....?

All the visible universe is nothing but a shop of images and signs.

The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

The idea which man forms of beauty imprints itself throughout his attire, rumples or stiffens his garments, rounds off or aligns his gestures, and, finally, even subtly penetrates the features of his face.