Pleasure alone makes existence worthwhile. A pleasure-seeker has a difficult time parting from life.

Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.

Now her eyes meet mine like green lightning-they are green, these eyes of hers, whose power is so indescribable-green, but as are precious stones, or deep unfathomable mountain lakes.

Despite all the progress of civilization, women have remained exactly as they emerged from the hand of Nature.

If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.

Cats exercise... a magic influence upon highly developed men of intellect. This is why these long-tailed Graces of the animal kingdom, these adorable, scintillating electric batteries have been the favorite animal of a Mohammed, Cardinal Richlieu, Crebillon, Rousseau, Wieland.