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.

Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.

Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.

Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.