There exist but three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create.
Other men are serfs or slaves, created for the stable, that is, to exercise what are called professions.
XIX
Observe that those who advocate the abolition of capital punishment are more or less interested in its abolishment. Often, they are executioners. The matter may be summarized thus: "I wish to be able to cut off your head, but you shall not touch mine."
Those who abolish souls (materialists) necessarily abolish hell; they are, beyond all doubt, interested.
At the least, they are men that are afraid to live again, slothful ones.
XX
Mme. de Metternich, although a princess, has forgotten to answer me, in regard to what I said of her and of Wagner. Manners of the Nineteenth Century.
XXII
The woman Sand is the Prudhomme of immorality. She has always been a moralist. Only formerly she practiced amorality. Also she has never been an artist. She has the famous fluent style, dear to the bourgeois.