These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking.... Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of his mind.

On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

A child sees everything in a sense of newness - he is always drunk. Genius is nothing but childhood re-attained at will.

Today I felt pass over me A breath of wind from the wings of madness.

In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.

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