If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

Everything for me becomes allegory

Being a useful man has always seemed to me to be something truly hideous.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

I should like the fields tinged with red, the rivers yellow and the trees painted blue. Nature has no imagination.

Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. They do everything in their power not to have any. And therefore, the great man, in order to exist, must possess a force of attack which is greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of people.