The taste for pleasure attaches us to the present. The concern with our salvation leaves us hanging on the future.

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

Genius is childhood recalled at will.

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.

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.

Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.

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