"The beautiful is always bizarre."

"The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished."

"I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy."

"How convenient it is to declare that everything is totally ugly within the habit of the époque, rather than applying oneself to extract from it the dark and cryptic beauty, however faint and invisible it is."

"Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty."

"There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze."

"That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty."

"I sit in the sky like a sphinx misunderstood; My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans; I hate the movement that displaces the rigid lines, With lips untaught neither tears nor laughter do I know."

"Beauty, you walk on corpses, mocking them;"

"The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear."