We Should Not Touch Our Idols: Their

Through Small Apertures We Glimpse Abysses Whose Sombre Depths Turn Us Faint. And Yet Over The Whole There Hovers An Extraordinary Tenderness.

The Denigration Of Those We Love Always Detaches Us From Them In Some Degree. Never Touch Your Idols: The Gilding Will Stick To Your Fingers.

For A Long Time Now My Heart Has Had Its Shutters Closed, Its Steps Deserted, Formerly A Tumultuous Hotel, But Now Empty And Echoing Like A Great Empty Tomb.

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

For Every Bourgeois, In The Heat Of Youth, If Only For A Day, For A Minute, Has Believed Himself Capable Of Immense Passions, Of Heroic Enterprises. The Most Mediocre Libertine Has Dreamed Of Oriental Princesses; Every Rotary Carries About Inside Him The Debris Of A Poet.