Every week we ought to have one hour for recieving letters, then go take a bath.

Pity is the most pleasant feeling in those who have not much pride and have no prospect of great conquests; for them the easy prey - and that is what all who suffer are - is enchanting.

The charm of the Platonic mode of thought ... consisted precisely in the resistance to the obvious evidence of the senses.

All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

Ye are ugly? Well then, my brethren, take the sublime about you, the mantle of the ugly!

What Europe owes to the Jews? - Many things, good and bad, and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness - and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky, now glows - perhaps glows out.

The definition of morality: Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life - and being successful.