University of Virginia Library

XVIII

Squibs. Despise the sensibility of nobody. Each
man's sensibility is his genius.

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

From a passionate concubinage one may guess at
the joys of a young married couple.

---

[16]

The precocious taste for women. I used to confuse
the smell of women with the smell of furs. I remember
. . . Indeed, I loved my mother for her elegance.
I was a precocious dandy.

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

The 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
agreeable to the spirit, as are discords to the jaded ear.

What is exhilarating in bad taste is the aristocratic
pleasure of giving offence.

Germany expresses her dreams by means of line,
England by means of perspective.

There is, in the creation of all sublime thought, a
nervous concussion which can be felt in the cerebellum.

Spain brings to religion the natural ferocity of
Love.

Style. The eternal touch, eternal and cosmo-polite.
Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.