Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.

Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.

A precious liquid, a poison dearer than that of the Borgias - because it is made from our blood, our health, our sleep, and two-thirds of our love - we must be stingy with it.

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

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.