Everything, alas, is an abyss, — actions, desires, dreams, words!.

Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas or steam or table turning. It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin..

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist..

There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced-of what? That they must succeed. And so….

The world progresses only through misunderstanding..

A friend of mine, the most innocuous dreamer who ever lived, once set a forest on fire to see, as he said, if it would catch as easily as people said….

The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being a….

The Poet is like the prince of the clouds, who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer. Exiled on the ground in the midst of the jeering crowd, h….

The lover of life makes the whole world into his family, just as the lover of the fair sex creates his from all the lovely women he has found, from t….

Evil comes up softly like a flower..

I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon, In which long worms crawl like remorse..

The form of a town changes more swiftly alas! Than the heart of a mortal..

Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity..

Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always the product of skill..

Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one wri….

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart)..

The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist..

A man who from the beginning has long been soaked in the languid atmosphere of a woman, the scent of her hands, her bosom, her knees, her hair, her l….

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often usele….

Unable to do away with love, the Church found a way to decontaminate it by creating marriage..

The insatiable thirst for everything that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the most living proof of our immortality..