God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist.

Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror.

It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.

The idea of beauty which man creates for himself imprints itself on his whole attire, crumples or stiffens his dress, rounds off or squares his gesture, and in the long run even ends by subtly penetrating the very features of his face. Man ends by looking like his ideal self. These engravings can be translated either into beauty or ugliness; in one direction, they become caricatures, in the other, antique statues.

It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?

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