Any man who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul.

The priest is an immense being because he makes the crowd believe astonishing things.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

There exist certain individuals who are, by nature, given purely to contemplation and are utterly unsuited to action, and who, nevertheless, under a mysterious and unknown impulse, sometimes act with a speed which they themselves would have thought beyond them.

The dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.

Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry.