When a man takes to his bed, almost all his friends have a secret desire to see him die; some, to establish the fact that his health is inferior to theirs; others, in the disinterested hope of studying an agony.
The arabesque is the most spiritual of designs..
VI
The man of letters rouses the capitals and conveys a taste for intellectual gymnastics.
We love women in proportion as they are strangers to us. To love intelligent women is a pleasure of the pederast. Thus bestiality excludes pederasty.
The spirit of buffoonery need not exclude charity; but that's rare.
Enthusiasm applied to other things than abstractions is a sign of weakness and disease.
The thin is more naked, more indecent, than the fat.