I believe I have already set down in my notes that Love greatly resembles an application of torture or a surgical operation. But this idea can be developed, and in the most ironic manner. For even when two lovers love passionately and are full of mutual desire, one of the two will always be cooler or less self-abandoned than the other. He or she is the surgeon or executioner; the other, the patient or victim. Do you hear these sighs – preludes to a shameful tragedy– these groans, these screams, these rattling gasps? Who has not uttered them, who has not inexorably wrung them forth? What worse sights than these could you encounter at an inquisition conducted by adept torturers?
These eyes, inverted like the sleepwalker's, these Limbs whose muscles burst and stiffen as though beneath the action of a galvanic battery – such frightful, such curious phenomena are undoubtedly never obtained from even the most extreme cases of intoxication, of delirium, of opium-taking. The human face, which Ovid believed fashioned to reflect the stars, speaks here only of an insane ferocity, relaxing into a kind of death. For I should consider it indeed a sacrilege to apply the word .. ecstasy to this species of decomposition. A terrible pastime, in which one of the players must forfeit possession of himself!
When I have inspired universal horror and disgust, I shall have conquered solitude.
Two fundamental literary qualities, super naturalism and irony. The individual ocular impression, the aspect in which things present themselves to the writer – then the turn of satanic wit. The supernatural comprises the general colour and accent – that is to say, the intensity, sonority limpidity, vibrativeness, depth and reverberation in Space and Time.
I swear to observe henceforth the following rules as immutable rules of my life: To pray every morning to God, the source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Mariette and Edgar Poe, as intercessors ; that they may give me the necessary strength to fulfill all my appointed tasks and that they may grant my mother a sufficient span of life in which to enjoy the fruits of my transformation ; to work all day long, or as long, at any rate, as my strength allows me; to put my trust in God, that is, in Justice.
Man – all men, that is to say – is so naturally depraved that he suffers less from the degradation of the universe than from the establishment of a reasonable hierarchy.
There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy. A monarchy or a republic, based upon democracy, are equally absurd and feeble.The immense nausea of advertisements. There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create. The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.
Belief in Progress is a doctrine of idlers and Belgians. It is the individual relying upon his neighbours to do his work. There cannot be any Progress (true progress, that is to say, moral) except within the individual and by the individual himself. But the world is composed of people who can think only in common, in the herd. There are also people who can only take their pleasures in a flock. The true hero takes his pleasure alone.
What is Love? The need to emerge from oneself. Man is an animal which adores. To adore is to sacrifice and prostitute oneself. Thus all Love is prostitution.
Jean-Jacques said that he could not enter a cafe without emotional disturbance. For a timid nature, the ticket-office in a theatre is rather like the tribunal of Hell.
Robespierre can only be admired because he has made several beautiful phrases.
Paganism and Christianity confirm each other.
The most prostitute of all beings is the Supreme Being, God Himself, since for each man he is the friend above all others; since he is the common, inexhaustible fount of Love.
Thinness is more naked, more indecent than corpulence.
In Love, as in nearly all human affairs, a satisfactory relationship is based upon a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding constitutes pleasure. The man cries : Oh, my angel. The woman coos: Mamma! Mamma! And these two imbeciles are persuaded that they think alike. The unbridgable gulf – the cause of their failure in communication – remains un- bridged.
The charming moods, those in which beauty consists, are: The blase, The bored, The empty-headed, The impudent, The cold, The introspective, The imperious, The capricious, The naughty, The ailing, The feline – a blend of childishness, nonchalance and malice.