I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.

The will to work must dominate, for art is long and time is brief.

But a dandy can never be a vulgar man

...an industry which can furnish results identical to nature must be the absolute in art.

Imagination is an almost divine faculty which, without recourse to any philosophical method, immediately perceives everything: the secret and intimate connections between things, correspondences and analogies.

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it-it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

Nothing can be done except little by little.