Georges Rodenbach Quotes & Sayings

The essence of art that is at all noble is the DREAM, and this dream dwells only upon what is distant, absent, vanished, unattainable. — Georges Rodenbach

The widower reviewed his past in a sunless light which was intensified by the greyness of the November twilight, whilst the bells subtly impregnated the surrounding atmosphere with the melody of sounds that faded like the ashes of dead years. — Georges Rodenbach

Dead towns are the Cathedrals of Silence. They, too, have their gargoyles, singular figures, exaggerated, dubious, set in high profile. They stand out from the mass of grey, which takes all it has in the way of character, its twitchings of stagnant life from them. Some have been distorted by solitude, others grimace with a directionless fervour; here there are masks of cherished lust, there faces ceaselessly sculpted and furrowed by mysticism. Human gargoyles, the only figures of interest in this monotonous population. — Georges Rodenbach

The pale water which goes away along paths of silence. — Georges Rodenbach

Bruges was his dead wife. And his dead wife was Bruges. The two were untied in a like destiny. It was Bruges-la-Morte, the dead town entombed in its stone quais, with the arteries of its canals cold once the great pulse of the sea had ceased beating in them. — Georges Rodenbach

Can there be anything more sad than a girl dying on the day of her first communion, in her new dress. A little bride of death ... — Georges Rodenbach

As he walked, the sad faded leaves were driven pitilessly around him by the wind, and under the mingling influences of autumn and evening, a craving for the quietude of the grave ... overtook him with unwanted intensity. — Georges Rodenbach

There are women whose love only ends with death. — Georges Rodenbach

The main thing for inner contentment is to be in a state of grace. And there is an artistic state of grace, for art is a kind of religion. — Georges Rodenbach

The beauty of sorrow is superior to the beauty of life. — Georges Rodenbach

Dissonance is as fatal in ailments of the mind as it is in those of the body. — Georges Rodenbach

Without knowing why, he yielded to the temptation of those lips and flung onto them, eating them, partaking of their sacrament ... Eucharist of love with a red host! — Georges Rodenbach