Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternity in noble attitudes upon the desert sand, they gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.

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

What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing.

It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.

There is no sweeter pleasure than to surprise a man by giving him more than he hopes for.

It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.