Théophile Gautier Quotes

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of executi...

I have often been charged with falsehood and hypocrisy, yet there lives not the man who would more g...

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity...

The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and ...

Those horses must have been Spanish jennets, born of mares mated with a zephyr; for they went as swi...

I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotte...

I had never been into society; for me the world was the enclosure of the college and the seminary. I...

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need...

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes?

You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that -- it's all very amusing to talk about...

What constitutes the pleasure of the traveler is the obstacle, the fatigue, the peril itself. What p...

The cat is a dilettante in fur.

Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all beca...

To love is to admire with the heart to admire is to love with the mind.

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal... one that does not...

I was born to travel and write verse.

To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you...

Things perish. Gods have passed.But song sublimely castShall citadels outlast.

Whatever may have been said of the satiety of pleasure and of the disgust which usually follows pass...

The years I have squandered in puerile excitement, in going hither and thither, in seeking to force ...

This apparent hurly-burly and disorder turn out, after all, to reproduce real life with its fantasti...

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the d...

And of a Sunday swarm the folkUnder the honeysuckle vine, Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke, T...

For Art alone is great:The bust survives the state, The crown the potentate.

Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.

Demander à la poésie du sentimentalisme ... ce n'est pas ça. Des mots rayonnants, des mots de lumièr...

It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, t...

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection! It will make ...

One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing the...

What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing ...