I decided to be what crime made of me.

Though they may not always be handsome men doomed to evil posses the manly virtues.

Beauty has no other origin than the singular wound, different in every case, hidden or visible, which each man bears within himself, which he preserves, and into which he withdraws when he would quit the world for a temporary but authentic solitude

Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth, would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.

Men endowed with a wild imagination should have, in addition, the great poetic faculty of denying our universe and its values so that they may act upon it with sovereign ease.

We know that their adventures are childish. They themselves are fools. They are ready to kill or be killed over a card-game in which an opponent - or they themselves - was cheating. Yet, thanks to such fellows, tragedies are possible.

...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.