The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.

The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.

Alas! Man's vices, horrible as they are supposed to be, contain the positive proof of his taste for the infinite.

So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it-it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

I am bored in France because everyone resembles Voltaire.