Do not scorn any one's sensibility. One's sensibility, that is one's
genius.
By an ardent concubinage, one can imagine the joys of a young household.
The precocious taste for women. I used to confuse the odor of fur with
the odor of woman. I remember.... Finally, I loved my mother for her
elegance. Thus I was a precocious dandy.
The Protestant countries lack two elements essential to the happiness
of a well-bred man: gallantry and devotion.
The mingling of the grotesque and the tragic is pleasing to the mind,
as discords to blasé ears.
What is intoxicating in bad taste, is the aristocratic pleasure of
displeasing.
Germany expresses meditation by line, as England by perspective.
There is, in the birth of every sublime thought, a nervous shock that
is felt in the cerebellum.
Spain puts into its religion the ferocity natural to love.
STYLE.--The eternal note, the eternal and cosmopolitan style.
Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.
Why democrats do not love cats is easy to determine. The cat
is beautiful; it awakens ideas of luxury, of cleanliness, of
voluptuousness, etc.