Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly Quotes & Sayings

In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

For a decadent like Baudelaire the only possible ends are suicide or the foot of the cross — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

Beauty is single. Only ugliness is multiple, and even then its multiplicity is soon exhausted. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

She was one of those women of good family who no longer exist, elegant, distinguished, and haughty, whose pallor and thinness seem to say, 'I am conquered by the era, like all my breed. I am dying, but I despise you,' and - devil take me! - plebeian as I am, and though it is not very philosophical , I cannot help finding that beautiful. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

Night, which in Autumn seems to fall from the sky so suddenly, chilled us... — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

For with dandies, a joke is the only way of making yourself respected. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

(it was) beautiful, like so many senseless things. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

And, in fact, if these crimes appeal less to the senses, they appeal more to the mind; and the mind, in the last analysis, is the profoundest part of us. For the novelist, therefore, there is a new type of tragedy to be derived from these crimes, more intellectual than physical in character, which do not really seem to be crimes to the superficial judgement of old materialistic societies because they do not involve bloodshed, and murder is committed only in the sphere of feelings and manners. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

She was as inept at causing pain as she was at giving pleasure. Strange lioness, indeed! She thought she possessed claws, but when she tried to bare them, nothing emerged from her magnificent velvet paws. Her scratches were of velvet! — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

Hatred needs scorn. Scorn is hatred's nectar! — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

He was terrified by the sublime horror of it, for intensity of feeling, carried to this degree, is sublime. ("A Woman's Vengeance") — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

If writers only dared to dare, a Suetonius or a Tacitus of the Novel could exist, for the Novel is essentially the history of manners, turned into a story and a play, as is History itself often enough. And there is no other difference than this: that the one, the Novel, cloaks its manners under the disguise of invented characters, while the other, History, provides names and addresses. Only, the Novel probes much deeper than history. It has an ideal, and History has none; it is limited by reality. The Novel also holds the stage much longer. ("A Woman's Vengeance") — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

My good fellow," said Mesnil, stopping, "ever since the creation of the world there have been men like me specially intended to astonish men...men like you. — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly

Extreme civilization robs crime of its frightful poetry, and prevents the writer from restoring it. That would be too dreadful, say those good souls who want everything to be prettified, even the horrible. In the name of philanthropy, imbecile criminologists reduce the punishment, and inept moralists the crime, and what is more they reduce the crime only in order to reduce the punishment. Yet the crimes of extreme civilization are undoubtedly more atrocious than those of extreme barbarism, by virtue of their refinement, of the corruption they imply and of their superior degree of intellectualism. ("A Woman's Vengeance") — Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly