“J'aime la folle cruauté des chimères qu'on apprivoise.”

“Demander à la poésie du sentimentalisme ... ce n'est pas ça. Des mots rayonnants, des mots de lumière ... avec un rythme et une musique, voilà ce que c'est, la poésie.”

“Nothing is truly beautiful unless it cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some need, and those of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor and infirm nature.”

“Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.”

“And then again, I am no longer quite such a good-looking young fellow that tapestries leap off the wall in my honour.”

“Tear up that funeral shroud—you are going to smother yourself in it. I am beauty, I am youth, I am life—come to me, and together we will be Love itself....Our life together will flow by like a dream, and it will be as one perpetual kiss.”

“I longed to be able to gather my whole life-force into a single impulse, and transmit it to her and blow into her frozen remains the fire that was consuming me.”