As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life. - Charles Baudelaire

"And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!

Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, and coldly determined to seek the means of expressing passion in the most visible manner. In this dual character, be it said in passing, we find the two distinguishing marks of the most substantial geniuses, extreme geniuses.

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