Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.

Perhaps the only misplaced curiosity is that which persists in trying to find out here, on this side of death, what lies beyond the grave.

Time spent with a cat is never wasted.

The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.

Never touch a butterfly's wing with your finger.

If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.