Flares. — Self-idolatry. | Poetic harmony of character. | Eurythmy of character and faculties. | Preserve all the faculties. | Increase all the faculties.

A form of worship (Magism, evocatory sorcery).

Sacrifice and the vow are the supreme formulas and symbols of exchange.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. An individual way of seeing, the aspect in which things stand before the writer, then a satanic turn of mind. The supernatural comprises the general colour and accent, that is, intensity, sonority, clarity, vibratory power, depth and resonance in space and time.

There are moments in life when time and space are deeper, and the sense of existence is immensely heightened.

On magic applied to the evocation of the great dead, to the restoration and improvement of health.

Inspiration always comes when a man wills it, but it does not always leave when he wills it.

On language and writing, considered as magical operations: evocatory sorcery.

On a Woman’s air.

The charming airs that make beauty are:

The jaded air,

The bored air,

The flighty air,

The impudent air,

The cold air,

The air of looking inward,

The air of domination,

The air of determination,

The malicious air,

The sickly air,

The catlike air, childishness, nonchalance and mischief mingled.

In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the whole depth of life reveals itself in the scene before our eyes, however ordinary it may be. The scene becomes the Symbol of that depth of life.

As I was crossing the Boulevard, and as I was hurrying a little to avoid the carriages, my halo came loose and fell into the mud of the macadam. Fortunately I had time to pick it up; but a moment later the unhappy thought slipped into my mind that it was a bad omen; and from then on the thought would not let go of me; it gave me no peace all day.

On the worship of oneself in love, from the point of view of health, hygiene, grooming, spiritual nobility and eloquence.

Self-purification and anti-humanity

There is a great resemblance between the act of love and torture or a surgical operation.

There is a magical operation in prayer. Prayer is one of the great forces of intellectual dynamics. There is something like an electrical recurrence in it.

The rosary is a medium, a vehicle; it is prayer brought within everyone’s reach.

Work, a progressive and cumulative force, bearing interest like capital, in the faculties as in the results.

Gambling, even guided by science, an intermittent force, will be defeated, however fruitful it may be, by work, however slight it may be, provided it is continuous.

If a poet asked the State for the right to keep a few bourgeois in his stable, people would be greatly astonished, whereas if a bourgeois asked for some roast poet, they would find it quite natural.

This will not scandalize my women, my daughters, or my sisters.

Sometimes he asked her permission to kiss her leg, and took the opportunity to kiss that beautiful leg in such a position that it would clearly trace its outline against the setting sun!

“Kitty, puss, puss-puss, my cat, my wolf, my little monkey, big monkey, big snake, my melancholy little monkey.”

Such whims of language, repeated too often, such frequent animal names, reveal a satanic side to love. Do not satans have the shapes of beasts? Cazotte’s camel—camel, devil and woman

A man goes to the pistol range, accompanied by his wife. He takes aim at a doll and says to his wife: I imagine it is you. — He closes his eyes and shoots down the doll. — Then he says, kissing his companion’s hand: Dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!

When I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I shall have conquered solitude.

This book is not made for my women, my daughters and my sisters. — I have few of these things.

— There are skins like armour against which contempt is no longer a pleasure.

— Many friends, many gloves—for fear of scabies.

— Those who loved me were despised people, I would even say despicable, if I cared to flatter respectable people.

God is a scandal—a scandal that pays.

Flares. — Do not despise anyone’s sensibility. Each person’s sensibility is his genius.

There are only two places where one pays for the right to spend: public latrines and women.

Through ardent cohabitation, one can guess at the pleasures of a young married couple.

. An early taste for women. I confused the scent of fur with the scent of woman. I remember… In short, I loved my mother for her elegance. I was therefore a precocious dandy.

My ancestors, idiots or maniacs, in solemn apartments, all victims of terrible passions.

Protestant countries lack two elements indispensable to the happiness of a well-bred man: gallantry and devotion.

The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is pleasing to the mind, as dissonances are to jaded ears.

What is intoxicating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing.

Germany expresses reverie through line, as England does through perspective.

In the birth of every sublime thought there is a nervous shock that is felt in the cerebellum.

Spain puts the natural ferocity of love into religion.

Style. — The eternal note, the eternal and cosmopolitan style. Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.

Flares. Suggestions. — It is easy to guess why democrats do not like cats. The cat is beautiful; it reveals ideas of luxury, cleanliness, sensual pleasure, etc...

Flares. — A little work, repeated three hundred and sixty-five times, yields three hundred and sixty-five times a little money, that is, an enormous sum. At the same time, fame is achieved.

[In the margin.] So too, a multitude of small pleasures make up happiness.

To create a cliché is genius. I must create a cliché.

— The concetto is a masterpiece.

— The Alphonse Rabbe tone.

— The kept-woman tone (My lovely one! Fickle sex!).

— The eternal tone.

Raw colouring, drawing deeply recut.

The prima donna and the butcher’s boy.

My mother is capricious; she must be feared and pleased.

Proud Hildebrand.

Napoleon III’s Caesarism. (Letter to Edgar Ney.) Pope and Emperor.

Flares. Suggestions. — To give oneself over to Satan—what does that mean?

What could be more absurd than Progress, since man, as daily experience proves, is always like and equal to man—that is, always in a savage state! What are the perils of forest and prairie beside the daily clashes and conflicts of civilization? Whether man ensnares his dupe on the boulevard or pierces his prey in unknown forests, is he not eternal man—that is, the most perfect beast of prey?

— They say I am thirty; but if I have lived three minutes in one…, am I not ninety.

… Work—is it not the salt that preserves mummified souls?

Beginning of a novel: start a subject anywhere, and, to feel the desire to finish it, begin with very beautiful sentences.