Great Throughts Treasury

"Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected."

"Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet."

"Music pierces the sky."

"My concern today is with the painting of manners of the present. The past is interesting not only by reason of the beauty which could be distilled from it by those artists for whom it was the present, but also precisely because it is the past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty with which it can be invested, but also to its essential quality of being present"

"My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!"

"My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it."

"My love, do you recall the object which we saw, that fair, sweet, summer morn! At a turn in the path a foul carcass on a gravel strewn bed, Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman, burning and dripping with poisons, displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way Its belly, swollen with gases."

"My soul travels on the smell of perfume like the souls of other men on music."

"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 favored 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 known where 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 seas and rose to her as to a cliff the tide. My own approval of each dreamy pose, like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted: and candor, with lubricity united, gave piquancy to every one she chose. Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lusters, 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 throne where, calm and solitary, she was sitting. So swerved her pelvis that, in one design, antelope?s white rump it seemed to graft to 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 flare it drowned in blood that amber-colored skin."

"My youth was a dark storm, Crossed here and there by brilliant suns; Thunder and rain have made ??such havoc, Let him stay in my garden very little crimson fruit."

"Nations, like families, have great men only in spite of themselves. They do everything in their power not to have any. And therefore, the great man, in order to exist, must possess a force of attack which is greater than the force of resistance developed by millions of people."

"Nature is a temple, where the living columns sometimes breathe confusing speech; man walks within these groves of symbols, each of which regards him as a kindred thing."

"Nature is a word, an allegory, a mold, an embossing, if you will."

"Nature... is nothing but the inner voice of self-interest."

"Nearly all our originality comes from the stamp that time impresses upon our sensibility."

"No man can bare His heart quite naked; there will always be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward."

"No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare."

"Not to be slaves and martyrs of Time, drunken, drunken ceaselessly. Wine, poetry or virtue; of what you want."

"Nothing can be done except little by little."

"Nothing in a portrait is a matter of indifference. Gesture, grimace, clothing, decor even - all must combine to realize a character."

"Nothing is as tedious as the limping days, when snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways, And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom, Assumes control of fate?s immortal loom"

"Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive."

"Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk - on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please."

"O Death, Captain, it's time, let us raise anchor! We disgusts this earth, O Death! You have to set sail! If you are ink black sky and sea which we see, our breasts, which only know shine. Pour on us poison comforting! as burn this fire in the brain take, plumb the abyss, Heaven, Hell: what does it matter? To the bottom of the unknown to find the new!"

"O night! O refreshing dark! For me you are the summons to an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city, scintillation of stars, outburst of gas-lamps, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty!"

"O wise among all Angels ordinate, God foiled of glory, god betrayed by fate, Satan, O pity my long wretchedness! O Prince of Exile doomed to heinous wrong, who, vanquished, riseth ever stark and strong, Satan, O pity my long wretchedness! Thou knowest all, proud king of occult things, Familiar healer of man's sufferings, Satan, O pity my long wretchedness! Thy love wakes thirst for Heaven in one and all: Leper, pimp, outcast, fool and criminal, Satan, O pity my long wretchedness!"

"Oh foul magnificence, sublime disgrace."

"Oh Lesbos, where the languid or joyous, ardent kisses like suns, fresh like watermelons are ornament of nights and days of glory."

"Oh night! Oh refreshing darkness! You guys are inside me sign party, you are releasing a distress! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a capital city, twinkling stars, exploding flashlights, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty! Twilight, how sweet and tender you are! The gleams rosy souls of the chandeliers that put spots of a dull red in the past glories of the West are still moves on the horizon, as agonize the day under the victorious oppression of the night, heavy draperies run an invisible hand from the depths of the East, all the complicated feelings begin fighting within the heart of man in the solemn hours of life."

"Oh pain! Oh pain! Time eats our lives."

"Oh, candid minds! For the key issue not forget, everywhere we have seen without looking for it, from the sublime to the bottom of the fatal ladder, the tedious spectacle of immortal sin: 'Woman, vile slave , and proud, that adoring laughs and loves bestial, man, greedy despot of licentious soul slave of the slave and tributary sewer; the joyful executioner, the sobbing martyr; feast that season soul and perfumes; poison exultant power of the tyrant, and the people, faithful to whip it humbles and overwhelms; religions that resemble ours, odes towards the sky; Pure Holiness, such in bed pen any prudish shown, looking at the hair shirt voluptuousness, Gabby Humanity, which his genius obstinacy and mad, now as before, with light witness, cries out to God in his choleric agony: Oh you, my fellow man, master, I curse you! ."

"Oh, Creator! Can monsters exist in the sight of him who alone knows how they were invented, how they invented themselves, and how they might not have invented themselves?"

"On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox."

"On the vaporization and the centralization of the Self. All is there."

"Once our heart has been harvested once, Life becomes miserable."

"Once someone asked, when I was present, what constituted the greatest pleasure in love. Someone replied, naturally: in receiving. Another: in giving. Someone said: the pleasure of pride! someone else: the ecstasy of humility! All these muckers making like the Imitation of Christ. Finally, an impudent utopian was found who insisted that the greatest pleasure of love was in forming new citizens for the fatherland. Me, I said: what is uniquely, supremely voluptuous about love lies in the certainty of doing evil."

"Once we have burned our brains out, we can plunge to Hell or Heaven?any abyss will do?deep in the Unknown to find the new!"

"One can only forget about time by making use of it."

"One must astound the bourgeois."

"One night the soul of wine sang in the bottles:! Man, to you I lift up, oh dear disinherited, Under my glass prison and my vermilion ceilings; a heaping song of light and brotherhood."

"One night, the soul of wine was singing in the flask: "O man, dear disinherited! to you I sing this song full of light and of brotherhood from my prison of glass with its scarlet wax seals.""

"One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing. But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk. And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'"

"Only when we drink poison are we well."

"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."

"Our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze on its trivial image on a scrap of metal."

"Over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year."

"Over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year;"

"Passion I hate, and spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently."

"Perhaps it would be sweet to be, in turn, both victim and executioner."

"Photographers, you will never become artists. All you are is mere copiers."