When one tears away the veils and shows them naked, people's souls give off such a pungent smell of decay.

Come now, don't make such a funeral face. It isn't dying that's sad; it's living when you're not happy.

While I was an honorable man in her eyes, she did not love me. But the minute she understood what I was, when she breathed the true and foul odor of my soul, love was born in her – for she does love me! Well, well! There is nothing real, then, except evil.

Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible and splendid... like love!

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.

You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation.

Desire can attain the darkest human terror and give an actual ideal of hell and its horror.