I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

[He] went on to say that during all those years he had done nothing at all, that all he had felt had been a need to live, to live actively, violently, noisily, a need to...