“...and the lamp having at last resigned itself to death.There was nothing now but firelight in the room,And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom.”

“My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim,She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides:And showed such pride as, while her luck betides,A sultan's favoured slave may show to him.When it lets off its lively, crackling sound,This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone,Gives me an ecstasy I've only knownWhere league of sound and luster can be found.She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed,Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease.My love was deep and gentle as the seasAnd rose to her as to a cliff the tide.My own approval of each dreamy pose,Like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted:And candour, with lubricity united,Gave piquancy to every one she chose.Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres,Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene,Swanned themselves, undulating in their sheen;Her breasts and belly, of my vine and clusters,Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting,To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown,And to disturb her from the crystal throneWhere, calm and solitary, she was sitting.So swerved her pelvis that, in one design,Antiope's white rump it seemed to graftTo a boy's torso, merging fore and aft.The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine.The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within,The hearth alone lit up the darkened air,And every time it sighed a crimson flareIt drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin”

“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.”

“What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire, all its poetry and all its charity, to the unexpected as it comes along, to the stranger as he passes.”

“Be Drunken, Always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Be Drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.”

“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. ”

“It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!The land rots; we shall sail into the night;if now the sky and sea are black as inkour hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.Only when we drink poison are we well —we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell,who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. ("Le Voyage")”