The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what ma...n should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are. The facts: nothing matters but the facts: worship of the facts leads to everything, to happiness first of all and then to wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman. For rulers are not a terror to good work...s, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite! There are only two great currents in the history of manki...nd: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lord Byron is an exceedingly interesting person, and as such is it not to be regretted that he is a slave to the vilest and most v...ulgar prejudices, and as mad as the winds? There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what the untrained eyes consider abominable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and ...crooked as individuals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How utterly futile debauchery seems once it has been accomplished, and what ashes of disgust it leaves in the soul! The pity of it... is that the soul outlives the body, or in other words that impression judges sensation and that one thinks about and finds fault with the pleasure one has taken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »