My love, do you recall the object which we saw, That fair, sweet, summer morn! At a turn in the path a foul carcass On a gravel strewn bed, Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman, Burning and dripping with poisons, Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way Its belly, swollen with gases.

The insatiable thirst for everything that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality.

In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one's eyes. It becomes its symbol.

In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.

I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.

One must work, if not from inclination, at least out of despair — since it proves, on close examination, that work is less boring than amusing oneself.

I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know.