True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.

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

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.

Our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze on its trivial image on a scrap of metal.

Perfumes, colours and sounds echo one another.