Through the Unknown, we'll find the New

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

I have cultivated my hysteria with pleasure and terror.

Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings - woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.