The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before he is defeated.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.

Dancing can reveal all the mystery that music conceals.

I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.

Remembering is only a new form of suffering.

A man who drinks only water has a secret to hide from his fellow men.