"Life is the farce which everyone has to perform."

"What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world."

"Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge."

"I is another."

"I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there."

"And again: No more gods! no more gods! Man is King, Man is God! -- But the great Faith is Love!"

"I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain."

"I am the slave of my baptism. Parents, you have caused my misfortune, and you have caused your own."

"But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter."

"One evening I sat Beauty on my knees --And I found her bitter --And I reviled her."

"The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth."

"For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms."

"Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life."

"When you are seventeen you aren't really serious."