“Happy is he who causes a scandal.”

The connoisseur does not drink wine but tastes its secrets.

It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.

What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

If I’m going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I need to go further, in art, in life, in everything!

An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and has no hair under her arms.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Repulsion is the sentry that guards the gate to all that we most desire.

Physiological expenditure is a superficial way of self-expression. People who incline toward physical love accomplish nothing at all.

The mere fact of photographic transposition means a total invention: the capture of a secret reality.

Anything that does not take place erotically sublimates itself in the work of art.

When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.

Liking money like I like it, is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory.

Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.

Do not be afraid of perfection – you will never attain it.

The past is only going to cause you more pain. Stay away from it.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Nature has no goal in view, and final causes are only human imaginings.

Foolish is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will cause pain when it arrives but because anticipation of it is painful.

I would rather discover one true cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.

If I have advocated the cause of the Negro, it is not because I am a Negro, but because I am a man.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.