From that moment onwards, our loathsome society rushed, like Narcissus, to contemplate its trivial image on a metallic plate. A form of lunacy, an extraordinary fanaticism took hold of these new sun-worshippers.

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.

No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.

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

The unique and supreme voluptuousness of love lies in the certainty of committing evil. And men and women know from birth that in evil is found all sensual delight.

We love women in proportion to their degree of strangeness to us.

I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.