Remy de Gourmont Quotes

God is not all that exists. God is all that does not exist.

Man has made use of his intelligence; he invented stupidity.

Cliche refers to words, commonplace to ideas. Cliche describes the form or the letter, commonplace the substance or spirit. To confuse them is to confuse the thought with the expression of the thought. The cliche is immediately perceivable; the commonplace very often escapes notice if decked out in original dress. There are few examples, in any literature, of new ideas expressed in original form. The most critical mind must often be content with one or the other of these pleasures, only too happy when it is not deprived of both at once, which is not too rarely the case.

Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness

Man, in spite of his tendency towards mendacity, has a great respect for what he calls the truth. Truth is his staff in his voyage through life; commonplaces are the bread in his bag and the wine in his jug.

A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble

Nothing exists except by virtue of a disequilibrium, an injustice. All existence is a theft paid for by other existences; no life flowers except on a cemetery.

Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.

In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.

Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction

Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of language... the intervention of grammarians is almost always bad.

The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.

Man is the inventor of stupidity.

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.

Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.

And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires.

To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes-countrysides and figures, movements and gestures-how could he have a style, that is originality?

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.

Extraordinarily excessive sensuality it may be .. but it all comes down to the same thing in the end, and one means is surely as good as another, since the end obtained is always the same. In any case the exceptional, endlessly repeated, is no different than the banal; and unceasing recapitulation can add nothing, in the end, to the sum of experience. I am weary and hopeless three times the dupe. Why have you trained me in the shame of abominable sins?

If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be -not understood, but divined.

Art includes everything which stimulates the desire to live; science includes everything which sharpens the desire to know. Art, even the most disinterested, the most disembodied, is the auxiliary of life.

Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

Good books are irrefutable, and bad books refute themselves.

To know what everyone knows is to know nothing.

Thinking is hard work. One can't bear burdens and ideas at the same time

Man begins by loving love and ends by loving a woman. Woman begins by loving a man and ends by loving love.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

Money is the sign of liberty. To curse money is to curse liberty- to curse life, which is nothing, if it be not free.

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.

Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.

Modesty is the delicate form of hypocrisy.

Art is the accomplice of love.

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.

An imbecile is never bored: he contemplates himself.

Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.

Most men who rail against women are railing at one woman only.

Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.

Art includes everything that stimulates the desire to live

The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.

The woman who loves always smells good.

Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

For two thousand years Christianity has been telling us: life is death, death is life; it is high time to consult the dictionary.