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.

There are connoisseurs of blue just as there are connoisseurs of wine.

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.

beautiful December grapes, blue as plums, every grape a little skinful of sweet, tasteless water

When she raises her eyelids it's as if she were taking off all her clothes.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.