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

It is the pleasure of astonishing others, and the proud satisfaction of never being astonished by them.

That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.

Every healthy man can do without food for two days — but without poetry, never!

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.