“Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The worl...”

“Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, i...”

“His scorn of humanity grew by what it fed on; he realized in fact that the world is mostly made up of solemn humbugs and silly idiots.There was no room for doubt; he could entertain no hope of disc...”

“Goyas savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing...”

“I shall be in Paris in two days. Well, all is finished. The waves ofhuman mediocrity rise to the sky and they will engulf the refuge whosedams I open. Ah! courage leaves me, my heart breaks! O Lord...”

“Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, ...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”

“But instead of spending our lives running towards our dreams, we are often running away from a fear of failure or a fear of criticism.”

“The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly.”

“Through Sade and Goya, the Western world received the possibility of transcending its reason in violence....”