Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.

(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.

I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports.... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.