Rémy de Gourmont Quotes

• “Demons are like obedient dogs; they come when they are called.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  189 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  140 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Art is the accomplice of love.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  27 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  20 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll. She loves it, & that's all. It is thus that we should love.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  18 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  17 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Chastity is the most unnatural of the sexual perversions.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  15 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  14 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “The man of genius may dwell unknown, but one always may recognize the path he has followed into the forest. It was a giant who passed that way. The branches are broken at a height that other men cannot reach.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  13 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Those men who live with the greatest intensity are often the ones who seem to take least interest in life.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  12 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “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?”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Tears flow and smiles fade to the same rhythm of life, to disappear together in the bottomless abyss.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  9 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know oneself so different from others that no longer feels allied with men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,--while society fraternity is based on resemblances.
  The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul, -and all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which Andre Gide belongs.
  The misfortune of these beings, when they express themselves, is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally, to be loved from afar & almost understood, as parchments are seen & read above sealed cases.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  7 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “To be a member of such a crowd ... is not much to be far removed from solitude; the freedom of everyone is assured by the freedom to which everyone else lays claim.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  6 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  6 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Intelligence is perhaps but a malady, -a beautiful malady; the oysters's pearl.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  6 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement

• “She lit the candelabras which stood on the mantelpiece. Placed at the head of the bead, on a side-table, they looked like two burning bushes, their flames solemn and inextinguishable. But beneath that avalanche of light the dead man became hideous: the pale head displayed a whiteness more livid than the bedsheet, ghastly against the cambric of the pillow; pits of shadow were hollowed out under the eyes and his nose was villainously elongated, and even the mouth seemed wicked – his mouth, which was so very gentle!
  ”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  6 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The only excuse a man has for writing is that he express himself, that he reveal to others the kind of world reflected in the mirror of his soul; his only excuse is that he be original.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “Deprived of the infinite, man has become what he always was: a supernumerary.
  He hardly counts; he forms part of the troupe called Humanity; if he misses a cue, he is hissed; and if he drops through the trapdoor another puppet is in readiness to take his place.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Мъжете, които се изказват лошо за жените, обикновен имат предвид само една жена." Реми дьо Гурмон”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement
• “To ameliorate & raise the standard of the workingmen to the bourgeois level, is perhaps to create a race of slaves content with their lot,-a cast of comfortable Pariahs.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  4 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “Abstractions do us much harm by impelling us to the quest of the absolute in all things. Joy does not exist, but there are joys: and these joys may not be folly felt unless they are detached from neutral or even painful conditions. The idea of continuity is almost self-negating. Nature makes no leaps; but life makes only bounds. It is measured by our heartbeats & these may be counted. That there should be, amid the number of deep pulsations that scan the line of our existence, some grievous ones, does not permit the affirmation that life is therefore evil. Moreover, neither a continuous joy would be perceived by consciousness.”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  4 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement

Advertisement

• “The vainglory of wishing to understand is dangerous, immoral and, above all, old-fashioned. The modern way – perhaps the final way - is to say: Go forward, without knowing why, as quickly as possible, towards an unknown goal! To act and think are opposites which identify one only in the Absolute. To accomplish all one's movements – of the head, the arms, the legs – without ever quite attaining the status of a puppet, but with a certainty that gives one a feeling of rightness: that is what is nowadays held up as the ideal. Be citizens of Universal activity! Forget to be conscious of ourselves! The blind horse gallops without hesitation, not knowing where it is going, not caring where it has been: so let up put out our eyes!”

  Rémy de Gourmont

  3 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

Advertisement