For two thousand years Christianity, impudently playing with the meaning of words, has been telling us: Life is death, death is life. It is time to consult the dictionary.
Politics depends upon statesmen in about the same measure that the weather depends upon astronomers.
There are two courses open to the prophet: either to announce a future in conformity with the past,—or to be mistaken.
An imbecile is never bored: he contemplates himself.
Nothing is better for "spiritual advancement" and the detachment of the flesh than a close reading of the "Erotic Dictionary."
The greater part of men who speak ill of women are speaking ill of a certain woman.
The man of genius may dwell unknown, but one always may recognize the path he has followed into the forest. It was a giant who passed that way. The branches are broken at a height that other men cannot reach.
Werther possesses great interest because Goethe afterward wrote Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and so many other works, all different. The Werther of those who revamp their first book fifteen or thirty times loses with each new work a little of its initial worth; after the third book it is worth almost nothing. At first, however, one cannot tell whether that Werther is the product of a brain or of a mould; that is why the first book is sacred.
An unnamable critic notes some of the flaming errors of Verhaeren,—a few "among a hundred others." It is thither, toward the error, toward the stain, toward the wound, that the mediocre spirit, like the fly, wings its way unerringly. He looks at neither the eyes, the hair, the hands, the throat, nor all the grace of the woman passing by; he sees only, the mud with which some churl has bespattered her gown; he rejoices at the sight; he would like to see the spot grow and devour both the gown and the flesh of its wearer; he would have everything as ugly, as dirty and despicable as himself.
Dialogue.—GOD: Who has made you man? MAN: Who has made you God?