Great Throughts Treasury

"Poe?s drunkenness was a mnemonic device, a deliberate method of work, drastic and fatal, no doubt, but suited to his passionate nature. Poe taught himself to drink, just as a careful man of letters makes a deliberate practice of filling his notebooks with notes."

"Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place."

"Poetry has no goal other than itself; it can have no other, and no poem will be so great, so noble, so truly worthy of the name of poem, than one written uniquely for the pleasure of writing a poem."

"Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red."

"Progress, this great heresy of decay."

"Pure draughts men are philosophers and dialecticians. Colorists are epic poets."

"Regarding sleep, this sinister adventure of each night, one could say that people fall asleep daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we didn't know that it results from their being oblivious of danger."

"Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blas‚ ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days? the region of pure poetry."

"Remembering is only a new form of suffering."

"Rhythm, perfume, light, o my only queen."

"Romanticism is precisely situated neither in choice of subject, nor exact truth, but in the way of feeling."

"Samuel was, more than all the others, the man of failed works of beauty; - A fantastical and sickly creature, Whose poetry shines forth in His person much more than in His works, and who, around one o'clock in the morning, Between the dazzling of a coal fire and the clock's tick-tock, always Seemed to be the god of impotence - a modern and hermaphrodite god, - so colossal an impotence, so enormous, reaching epic proportions!"

"Satan be praised! Glory to you on High where once you reigned in Heaven, and in the pit where now you dream in taciturn defeat! Grant that my soul, one day, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, meet you when above your brow its branches, like a second Temple, spread!"

"Satan or God, who cares! Angel or Siren, who cares if you make - fairy with velvet eyes, rhythm, perfume, glimmer, O my only queen! - The universe less hideous and lighter moments?"

"Satan pain, suffering exhaustion following the Poverty me! Do you oppressed, you're a leper, even loving the taste of heaven that fills the interior."

"Scent, sound or sight, beneficent, malign ? Who cares if you?re a blessing or a curse, So long as you bring light,"

"Second, exactly three thousand six hundred times an hour, whisper it: Remember! - Come quickly, the sound of an insect, now says: I do not even past, even with the life I suck hose Disgusting!"

"Seek not my heart; the beasts have eaten it."

"She is very ugly. And yet, it is delicious! Time and Love have noted with the claws and have cruelly taught what each minute and each kiss take youth and freshness. It is truly ugly; is ant, spider, if you want to skeleton: but it is also concoction, teachers, spell! In short, it is exquisite. There was the time to break the sparkling harmony of her gait and indestructible elegance of its frame. Love could not alter the softness of her child breath, and time nothing ripped from his abundant mane exhaling perfume griffon all vitality French Midi: Nimes, Aix, Arles, Avignon, Narbonne, Toulouse, blessed cities sun, in love and lovely! In vain with good teeth bit into Time and Love; nothing will capture the vague charm, but eternal, his chest doncel. Perhaps, but not tired, and always heroic, suggests those horses fine race the eyes of the true aficionado distinguish even go hooked to a rental car or a slow wagon. And it is also so sweet and earnest! As you want in autumn; it would seem that the approach of winter turns in his heart a new fire, and nothing was ever fatiguing as servile tenderness."

"Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools!), then photography and art are the same thing."

"So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk."

"So you see how difficult it is to Understand one another, my dear angel, how incommunicable thought is, even Between two people in love."

"Soon we will plunge into the cold darkness; farewell, vivid brightness of our too-short summers!"

"Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows, and all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone. I already hear the dead thuds of logs below falling on the cobblestones and the lawn."

"Souvenirs? More than if I had lived a thousand years!"

"Spleen: I'm like the king of a rainy country, rich but impotent, young and yet very old, who, scorning its tutors bowing, bored with his dogs as with other beasts. Nothing can 'cheer him, neither game nor falcon. Nor his people dying in front of the balcony from the grotesque buffoon favorite ballad do distracted over the front of this cruel invalid; his fleurdelis‚ bed turns into the tomb, and the ladies of the bedchamber, for that every prince is handsome, do know more find toiletries immodest to draw a smile from this young skeleton. The scientist who made ??him gold could never from its being root out corrupt element, and in these baths of blood of the romans come to us, and which in their old age the powerful recall, I?ll has managed to warm this dazed cadaver Where flowing instead of blood the green water of Lethe I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich goal sterile, young goal with an old wolf's itch, one Who escapes His tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with His dogs; nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, His people dying by the balcony; the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite No. skirt gets him through a single night; His bed of fleur-de-lis Becomes a tomb; -even the ladies of the court, for Whom all kings are beautiful, cannot put it shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; the scholar who makes His gold cannot invent washes to cleanse the poisoned element; -even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up His shot corpse, Whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood."

"Stop looking for my heart; of the monsters ate."

"Strangeness is an ingredient necessary in beauty."

"Strolling hand in my chest unconscious; seeking the check, darling, there was a place that was looted of predatory teeth, the woman with nails. now my heart's search; seven animals. My heart of a ruined palace crowd; murders, full of fights! -A fear of swimming naked chest around you."

"Sudden as a knife you thrust into my sorry heart and strong as a host of demons came, gaudy and libertine, to make in my corrupted mind your bed and bedlam there; Beast, who bind me to you close as convict to his chains."

"Tell me, enigmatical man, whom do you love best, your father, Your mother, your sister, or your brother? I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother. Your friends? Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known. Your country? I do not know in what latitude it lies. Beauty? I could indeed love her, Goddess and Immortal. Gold? I hate it as you hate God. Then, what do you love, extraordinary stranger? I love the clouds the clouds that pass up there Up there the wonderful clouds!"

"Tell me, your heart sometimes he flies away, Agathe!"

"Thanks be to God, Who gives us suffering as sacred remedy for all our sins, that best and purest essence which prepares the strong in spirit for divine delights!"

"That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing."

"That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty."

"The act of love greatly resembles torture or surgery."

"The artist is today and has been for many years, despite his absence of merit, simply a spoiled child. So many honors, so much money bestowed on men without souls and without education."

"The beautiful is always bizarre."

"The beginning of a novel: start a subject, no matter where, and to have the desire to finish, start with very beautiful phrases."

"The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the most lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings - woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star."

"The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness."

"The Cat: Come, my beautiful cat, on my heart in love; Hold the claws of your paw, And let me plunge into your beautiful eyes, metal Mingled and agate. When my fingers caress at leisure your head and your back elastic, and my hand gets drunk pleasure of feeling your electric body, I see my wife in mind. His gaze, like yours, amiable beast, Profound and cold, cuts and cleaves like a dart and foot even to the head, A subtle air, a dangerous perfume, Swim around her brown body."

"The child, in love with prints and maps, holds the whole world in his vast appetite. How large the earth is under the lamplight! But in the eyes of memory, how the world is cramped!"

"The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flƒneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world - impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not - to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life."

"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs."

"The death of artists. How many times have I shake my bells and kiss your dastardly face, sad caricature? How many arrows have to waste, oh my quiver, to give in that white mystical character? We will use our soul in subtle intrigues, and demolish over heavy armor, before contemplating the great creature whose infernal desire fills us with sobs! There are those who never met his idol, and those convicted and marked by opprobrium sculptors, who hit his forehead and chest, have no other hope, strange and somber Capitol! But Death, hovering like a new sun, make your brain flowers open."

"The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance; we find delight in the most loathsome things; some furtherance of Hell each new day brings, and yet we feel no horror in that rank advance."

"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."

"The Devil's hand directs our every move the things we loathed become the things we love; day by day we drop through stinking shades quite undeterred on our descent to Hell."

"The dream of a curious, do you know as tasty bitterness and make you say, What singular man! I would die. Mingled in my loving soul the horror and desire: a bad particular. Anguish and hope, without factious attitude When the hourglass was beginning to empty grew my sharp and delightful torture. My heart was fleeing the familiar world I was like a child hungry for shows that hates the curtain as well as the obstacles they hate... and finally shew, cold, common reality had died without shock, and the terrible dawn enveloped me. ?And that? I said, 'The time has come. The curtain had risen and I expect yet.?"