A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

By nature, by necessity itself, [primitive man] is encyclopedic, while civilized man finds himself confined in the infinitely small regions of specialization.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

Love is a taste for prostitution. In fact, there is no noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to Prostitution.

A child sees everything in a sense of newness - he is always drunk. Genius is nothing but childhood re-attained at will.

It is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.

Strangeness is the indispensable condiment of all beauty.