Luckless is the country in which the symbols of procreation are the objects of shame, while the agents of destruction are honored! And yet you call that member your pudendum, or shameful part, as if there were anything more glorious than creating life, or anything more atrocious than taking it away.

--Savinien Cyrano De Bergerac (1619–1655), French author, playwright. A “lunarian,” in The Other World: States and Empires of the Moon, ch. 8 (1656).

One should never meet the artist. The work is so much more important than the creator.

--Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1902), French painter.