“What ought we to do ?” you ask me. You ask me time and time again, and yourselves as well. “Doing” — action — is so important to you..."

"This pre-established harmony between the theory of Schopenhauer and my own natural man causes me pleasure mingled with terror."

"Nietzsche, therefore, never set up house with knowledge so as to economise and preserve; he built no spiritual home over his head."

"The achievement of this Orphic poetry is to create the peace, trust, and sensitivity in which man can listen to this music of nature..."

"Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror..."

"Of that band of martyrs, .. the one whose tragedy most closely approaches Rimbaud's is Van Gogh."

"In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child."

"A void surrounded him, an awe-inspiring silence; no hermit or anchorite in the desert was ever more abandoned."

« “No man is an island,” said John Donne. I feel we are all islands — in a common sea. »

"Maïa ! Is she indeed the true goddess ? Hindoo wisdom long ago regarded the world as the dream of Brahma."

[Tableaux / Paintings]

"I was about to light a cigarette, the cigarette of satisfaction, when, at that very moment, a laugh burst out behind me."

"S. Augustine. : You are the victim of a terrible plague of the soul — melancholy ; which the moderns call accidie..."

"Civilization, our drug, has so poisoned us that our dependence on it is an addiction, a mixture of ecstasy and curse."

"That day, Des Esseintes took this incomparable book from his shelves and handled it devotedly..."

"There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind."

"In fact, for solid happiness and peace, there are none more favored than those blessed with a master-passion and a monopolizing work."

"It looked as though it had been built for all time. But this was not so. For it was built on sand, and of sand; and the tide was coming..."

"The black trees stood around me, rustling, and I loved them. Stars shone down from above, and I breathed in their white salutation."

"Who am I ? How did I get into the world ? Why was I not asked about it ?"

"The same book in the hand, the same pen between the fingers, the same conversation on the lips, and the same automobile instead of feet."

"When I grew up it seemed to me that the one advantage of living in London was that nobody ever wanted me to come out for a walk."

"Only transcendence can make this questionable life good, the world beautiful, and existence itself a fulfilment."

"Living thus, year in and year out, .. remote from the nature that is outside them, and no less remote from the nature that is within."