They had...finished their lives before their death – which is not always the end of life and often comes long before the end.

For a decadent like Baudelaire the only possible ends are suicide or the foot of the cross

We priests are the surgeons of souls, and it is our duty to deliver them of shameful secrets they would fain conceal, with hands careful to neither wound no pollute.

Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love.

I did not want to be taken for a fool – the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse.

Hatred needs scorn. Scorn is hatred's nectar!