Almost all our life is spent on foolish curiosities. Yet there are things that ought to arouse human curiosity to the highest degree, and which, to judge by people’s ordinary way of life, arouse none at all.
Where are our dead friends?
Why are we here?
Do we come from somewhere?
What is freedom?
Can it accord with the law of Providence?
Is the number of souls finite or infinite?
And the number of habitable worlds?
Etc., etc...
Nations have great men only in spite of themselves. Thus the great man is the victor over his entire nation.
Ridiculous modern religions:
Molière,
Béranger,
Garibaldi.
Belief in progress is a doctrine of the lazy, a doctrine of Belgians. It is the individual relying on his neighbours to do his work.
There can be progress (true, that is to say, moral) only within the individual and through the individual himself.
But the world is made up of people who can think only collectively, in bands. Such are the Belgian Societies.
There are also people who can amuse themselves only in a group. The true hero amuses himself all alone.
Eternal superiority of the dandy.
What is the Dandy?
My opinions on the theatre. What I have always found most beautiful in a theatre, in my childhood and still now, is the chandelier—a beautiful object, luminous, crystalline, intricate, circular and symmetrical.
Yet I do not entirely deny the value of dramatic literature. I would simply like the actors to be raised on very high platform shoes, to wear masks more expressive than the human face, and to speak through speaking trumpets; and finally, for women’s roles to be played by men.
After all, the chandelier has always seemed to me the leading actor, seen through the large end or the small end of the opera glass.
One must work, if not from inclination, at least from despair, since, on close examination, working is less tedious than amusing oneself.
There are in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous aspirations, one towards God, the other towards Satan.
The invocation to God, or spirituality, is a desire to rise in rank; the invocation of Satan, or animality, is a joy in descending. It is to the latter that love for women and intimate conversations with animals—dogs, cats, etc...—must be attributed. The joys arising from these two loves are suited to the nature of these two loves.
Intoxication with humanity; a grand tableau to create;
In the sense of charity;
In the sense of libertinism;
In the literary sense, or the Actor’s.
Judicial interrogation (torture), as an art of discovering the truth, is a barbarous folly; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.
The death penalty arises from a mystical idea, wholly misunderstood today. The death penalty is not meant to save society, at least materially. Its purpose is to save (spiritually) society and the offender. For the sacrifice to be perfect, there must be assent and joy on the victim’s part. To give chloroform to a man condemned to death would be an impiety, for it would deprive him of the consciousness of his greatness as a victim and remove his chances of winning Paradise.
As for torture, it is born of the vile part of man’s heart, thirsty for sensual pleasures. Cruelty and sensual pleasure, identical sensations, like extreme heat and extreme cold.
What I think of voting and the right to vote. Of the rights of man.
What is vile in any office.
A Dandy does nothing. Can you picture a dandy speaking to the people except to mock them?
No government is reasonable and secure except an aristocratic one.
Monarchy and republic, when based on democracy, are equally absurd and weak.
Immense nausea at the posters.
Only three beings are worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill and to create.
All other men are subject to taxes and compulsory labour, made for the stable—that is, to practise what are called professions.
Let us note that those who would abolish the death penalty must have more or less of a personal interest in abolishing it.
Often they are guillotiners. This can be summed up as follows: “I want to be able to cut off your head, but you will not touch mine.”
Those who abolish souls (materialists) necessarily abolish hell; they certainly have a personal interest in doing so.
At the very least, they are people who are afraid of living again—idlers.
Madame de Metternich, though a princess, has forgotten to reply to me about what I said of her and of Wagner.