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

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.

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

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible.