La, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté Luxe, calme et volupté There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work

Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons.

To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul, that soft summer morning round a turning in the path, the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones, its legs in the air like a woman in need burning its wedding poisons like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs, I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound, but I touch my body in vain to find the wound. I am the vampire of my own heart, one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter who can no longer smile. Am I dead? I must be dead.