I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art.

I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things. I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me.

I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram. Whatever I touched I made beautiful.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does.

There was no pleasure I did not experience. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine.

Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. I treated it as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered. Those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is. Nobody else interests me.