Today I had a strange warning. I felt the wind of insanity brush my mind.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

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.

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.

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

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

Laments of an Icarus The paramours of courtesans Are well and satisfied, content. But as for me my limbs are rent Because I clasped the clouds as mine. I owe it to the peerless stars Which flame in the remotest sky That I see only with spent eyes Remembered suns I knew before. In vain I had at heart to find The center and the end of space. Beneath some burning, unknown gaze I feel my very wings unpinned And, burned because I beauty loved, I shall not know the highest bliss, And give my name to the abyss Which waits to claim me as its own.