The beautiful is always bizarre.

Woman is natural, that is to say, abominable.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music.

The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear.

To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.

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.