And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.

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

Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.

I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.

The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or some one else, as he chooses. [...] The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. [...] What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire...to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes.

Today I felt pass over me A breath of wind from the wings of madness.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.