Theophile Gautier Quotes & Sayings

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough. — Theophile Gautier

Yes, I have loved as none in the world ever loved - with an insensate and furious passion - so violent that I am astonished it did not cause my heart to burst asunder. Ah, what nights - what nights! — Theophile Gautier

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing. — Theophile Gautier

I belong to those for whom the superfluous is necessary. — Theophile Gautier

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection! It will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness. It will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society, and leaving the company of creatures of its own society to be with you. — Theophile Gautier

Books follow morals, and not morals books. — Theophile Gautier

The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally
magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God!
what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very
strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person. — Theophile Gautier

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. — Theophile Gautier

Modesty was made for the ugly. — Theophile Gautier

I had never been into society; for me the world was the enclosure of the college and the seminary. I had a vague knowledge that there was a something
called woman, but I never dwelt upon the subject; I was absolutely innocent. I saw my infirm old mother only twice a year; that was the extent of my connection with the outside world. — Theophile Gautier

White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments. — Theophile Gautier

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

To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you; that everybody is impressed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or to show yourself at a balcony to make friends and to win mistresses from among those who look upon you. What a splendid, what a magnificent gift is that which spares you the need to be amiable in order to be loved, which relieves you of the need of being clever and ready to serve, which you must be if ugly, and enables you to dispense with the innumerable moral qualities which you must possess in order to make up for the lack of personal beauty. — Theophile Gautier

What is certain is that the world has got beyond the stage at which one may affect modesty and maidenly shame, and I think that the world is too old a duffer to assume to be childish and maidenly without becoming ridiculous.

Since its marriage to civilization society has forfeited its right to be ingenuous and prudish. There is a blush which beseems the bride as she is being bedded, which would be out of place on the morrow; for the young wife mayhap remembers no more what it is to be a girl, or, if she does remember it, it is very indecent, and seriously compromises the reputation of the husband. — Theophile Gautier

Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living. — Theophile Gautier

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen. — Theophile Gautier

No one is truly dead until they are no longer loved. — Theophile Gautier

Tear up that funeral shroud - you are going to smother yourself in it. I am beauty, I am youth, I am life - come to me, and together we will be Love itself ... Our life together will flow by like a dream, and it will be as one perpetual kiss. — Theophile Gautier

What I write is not for little girls. — Theophile Gautier

It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads. — Theophile Gautier

I have often been charged with falsehood and hypocrisy, yet there lives not the man who would more gladly than I speak truthfully and lay bare his heart; but as I have not one idea, one feeling in common with the people who surround me, as the very first word I should speak truthfully would cause a general hue and cry, I have preferred to keep silent, or, if I do speak, to utter only stupid commonplaces which everyone has agreed to believe in. — Theophile Gautier

The years I have squandered in puerile excitement, in going hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in endeavoring to make myself worthy of being loved. — Theophile Gautier

Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended perfectibility of the human race which is continually being dinned into our ears! — Theophile Gautier

I was born to travel and write verse. — Theophile Gautier

And then again, I am no longer quite such a good-looking young fellow that tapestries leap off the wall in my honour. — Theophile Gautier

The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable us to remain in the world of fantasy and escape from the people we rub shoulders with in the street. Ballets are the dreams of poets taken seriously. — Theophile Gautier

Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest. — Theophile Gautier

I longed to be able to gather my whole life-force into a single impulse, and transmit it to her and blow into her frozen remains the fire that was consuming me. — Theophile Gautier

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet. — Theophile Gautier

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution. — Theophile Gautier

Nothing is truly beautiful unless it cannot be used for anything; everything that is useful is ugly because it is the expression of some need, and those of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor and infirm nature. — Theophile Gautier

Those horses must have been Spanish jennets, born of mares mated with a zephyr; for they went as swiftly as the wind, and the moon, which had risen at our departure to give us light, rolled through the sky like a wheel detached from its carriage ... — Theophile Gautier

High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city. — Theophile Gautier

Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry. — Theophile Gautier

[A cat] will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness. — Theophile Gautier

The pleasure in traveling consists of the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can anyone find in an excursion when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventure. Everything is so well arranged. — Theophile Gautier

If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave. — Theophile Gautier

What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love. — Theophile Gautier

Yes, I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart. — Theophile Gautier

[A cat] will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society ... — Theophile Gautier

And of a Sunday swarm the folk
Under the honeysuckle vine,
Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke,
The sun, the melody, the wine. — Theophile Gautier

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign. — Theophile Gautier

Here a few poor and stunted flowers stood with drooping heads, like a convent of consumptive girls, waiting for a ray of sunlight to dry out their leaves already half-rotten with the damp. — Theophile Gautier

Our busy age does not always have time to read, but it always has time to look. — Theophile Gautier

It sometimes happens that a man who, up until now has believed himself to be gifted with perfect health, opens a medical book, either by chance or to pass the time, and on reading the pathological description of an illness, recognises that he is afflicted by it; enlightened by a fateful flash of insight, he feels at every symptom mentioned some obscure organ shuddering within him, or some hidden fibre of whose role in the body he had been unaware, and he pales as he realises that a death he thought was still a long way off is so imminent. — Theophile Gautier

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

It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women. — Theophile Gautier

Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel. — Theophile Gautier

The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist. — Theophile Gautier

Pleasure has turned into habit much more quickly thn I should have ever thought possible. — Theophile Gautier

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory. — Theophile Gautier

With all women gentleness is the most persuasive and powerful argument. — Theophile Gautier

There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet. — Theophile Gautier

Things perish. Gods have passed.
But song sublimely cast
Shall citadels outlast. — Theophile Gautier

This apparent hurly-burly and disorder turn out, after all, to reproduce real life with its fantastic ways more accurately than the most carefully studied out drama of manners. Every man is in himself all humanity, and if he writes what occurs to him he succeeds better than if he copies, with the help of a magnifying glass, objects placed outside of him. — Theophile Gautier

I am a man for whom the outside world exists. — Theophile Gautier

You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that
it's all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be giving one's mind to having fun without catching the pox, arranging one's life as comfortably as possible, having a few decent drawings on the wall, and above all writing well. That's the important thing: well-made sentences ... and then a few metaphors. Yes, a few metaphors. They embellish a man's existence. — Theophile Gautier

Pleasure has turned into passion much more quickly than I should ever have thought possible. — Theophile Gautier

Sooner barbarity than boredom. — Theophile Gautier

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal ... one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly. — Theophile Gautier

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.
Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires. — Theophile Gautier

(Decadent style) is ingenious, complicated, learned, full of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits of language ... forcing itself to express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening that it may translate them to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of aging and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of the fixed idea verging on madness ... In opposition to the classic style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with the larvae of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia, nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence, obscure phantasies at which daylight would stand amazed, and all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses. — Theophile Gautier

Fortune loves to give bedroom slippers to people with wooden legs, and gloves to those with no hands. — Theophile Gautier

Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly. — Theophile Gautier

Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist. — Theophile Gautier

I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity. — Theophile Gautier

The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil. — Theophile Gautier

Cats are the tigers of us poor devils. — Theophile Gautier

If thou wilt be mine, I shall make thee happier than God Himself in His paradise. The angels themselves will be jealous of thee. Tear off that funeral shroud in which thou about to wrap thyself. I am Beauty, I am Youth, I am Life. Come to me! Together we shall be Love. — Theophile Gautier

Literature has nothing to do with usefulness; the most useful place in any house is the toilet. — Theophile Gautier

The public, which has been wrong before and is wrong now, can accept only demons and angels on the stage — Theophile Gautier

Sometimes he will sit on the carpet in front of you, looking at you with eyes so melting, so caressing and so human, that they almost frighten you, for it is impossible to believe that a soul is not there. — Theophile Gautier

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind. — Theophile Gautier

The cat is a dilettante in fur. — Theophile Gautier

Sometimes he sits at your feet looking into your face with an expression so gentle and caressing that the depth of his gaze startles you. — Theophile Gautier

Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign. — Theophile Gautier

The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals — Theophile Gautier

To extract beauty from one's own milieu is one of the most difficult tasks of art. — Theophile Gautier

One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape. — Theophile Gautier

I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love! — Theophile Gautier

When we love - we grow — Theophile Gautier

[Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire. — Theophile Gautier

It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave. — Theophile Gautier