A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

Everything is theater.

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.

We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.

The abstract intelligence produces a fatigue that's the worst of all fatigues. It doesn't weigh on us like bodily fatigue, nor disconcert like the fatigue of emotional experience. It's the weight of our consciousness of the world, a shortness of breath in our soul.

I'm something that I used to be. I'm never where I feel I am, and if I seek myself, I don't know who's seeking me. My boredom with everything has numbed me. I feel banished from my soul.