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Un artiste n'est un artiste que grâce à son sens exquis du beau, - sens qui lui procure des jouissances enivrantes, mais qui en même temps implique, enferme un sens également exquis de toute difformité et de toute disproportion.
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Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility.
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Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest.
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I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
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All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.
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There is no more steely barb than that of the Infinite.
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God is the only being who, in order to reign, doesn't even need to exist.
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This life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed with a desire to change his bed.
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How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.
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Everything for me becomes allegory.
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Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.
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To be a great man and a saint for oneself, that is the only important thing.
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Swarming city, city full of dreams, Where the ghosts in broad daylight hang up the passers-by!
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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.
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Et à quoi bon exécuter des projets, puisque le projet est en lui-même une jouissance suffisante?
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It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.
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A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
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La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas.
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Our religion is itself profoundly sad - a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man's own language - so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
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It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
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I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.
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Music fathoms the sky.
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Aimer les femmes intelligentes est un plaisir de pédéraste.
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It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish.