What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

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

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.

With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk.

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.

If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.