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

For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.

Perfumes, colours and sounds echo one another.

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 exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.

Evil is committed without effort, naturally, fatally; goodness is always the product of some art.