Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of ou
|
The son will run away from the family not at eighteen but at twelve, emancipated by his gluttonous precocity; he will fly not to seek heroic adventures, not to deliver a beautiful prisoner from a tower, not to immortalize a garret with sublime thoughts, but to found a business, to enrich himself and to compete with his infamous papa.
|
There exist only three beings worthy of respect the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
|
It is the greatest art of the devil to convince us he does not exist.
|
Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man's physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
|
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
|
Both ardent lovers and austere scholars, when once they come to the years of discretion, love cats, so strong and gentle, the pride of the household, who like them are sensitive to the cold, and sedentary.
|
To say the word Romanticism is to say modern art -- that is, intimacy, spirituality, color, aspiration towards the infinite, expressed by every means available to the arts.
|
There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
|
Hypocrite reader -- my fellow -- my brother!
|
I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.
|
The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.
|
Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.
|
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.
|
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
|
Inspiration comes of working every day.
|
True Civilization does not lie in gas, nor in steam, nor in turn-tables. It lies in the reduction of the traces of original sin.
|
We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
|
Alas, human vices, however horrible one might imagine them to be, contain the proof (were it only in their infinite expansion) of man's longing for the infinite; but it is a longing that often takes the wrong route. It is my belief that the reason behind all culpable excesses lies in this depravation of the sense of the infinite.
|
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
|
It is regrettable that, among the Rights of Man, the right of contradicting oneself has been forgotten.
|
The world only goes round by misunderstanding.
|
Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
|
The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal's heart).
|
There is no such thing as a long piece of work, except one that you dare not start.
|
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
|
Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?
|
The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but also as past, ...
|
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.
|
As a remedy against all ills; poverty, sickness, and melancholy only one thing is absolutely necessary; a liking for work.
|