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

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated.

In order not to feel time's horrid fardel bruise your shoulders, grinding you into the earth, get drunk and stay that way. On what? On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever. But get drunk!

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

The mainspring of genius is curiosity.

Unable to suppress love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.

By a fatal law, a genius is always an idiot.