As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning, . . . [then] they fall down the curtains.

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

Hashish will be, indeed, for the impressions and familiar thoughts of the man, a mirror which magnifies, yet no more than a mirror.

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of giving offense.

Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves.

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; We find delight in the most loathsome things; Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

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