Esseintes Quotes & Sayings

A nondescript place, but it had inevitably changed over the years; one of the old oaks had been split by lightning and now lay on its side, and the others had grown into behemoths around their fallen comrade. — Julie Anne Long

The aesthetes of Des Esseintes' generation found diamonds common, rubies and emeralds depreciated, and turquoises vulgar. The old poetry was dead, though echoes of it lived on in the names of such gems as chrysoberyl and peridot and olivines and almandines and cymophanes and aquamarines. Beauty which has departed from things may live on in words. — Joan Evans

There's nothing like competing for your boyfriend's attention with an emotionally needy sibling to make you feel like the worst sort of evil psycho-bitch. — Lauren Willig

Goya's savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast. — Thomas Merton

He was searching his memory when suddenly a strange figure appeared in front of them, on horseback, trotted for a moment, then turned round in the saddle. His blood froze; he remained rooted to the spot in horror. That equivocal, sexless face was green, with terrible eyes of an icy light blue beneath purple lids; postules encircled its mouth; extraordinarily thin arms, bare from the elbows down and shaking with fever, emerged from ragged sleeves, and the fleshless thighs shivered in high boots which were far too large.
The dreadful gaze was fixed on Des Esseintes, boring into him, chilling him to the marrow, while the bulldog woman, now in even greater panic, clung to him with her head thrown back on her rigid neck, screaming blue murder. And instantly he grasped the meaning of the horrifying vision. He was looking at the figure of the Pox. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

It was snowing. In the lamplight, blades of ice were growing on the outside of the blue-tinged window-panes and the hoarfroast, like melted sugar, glittered on the gold-spangled bottle-glass of the windows. Absolute silence enveloped the little house as it slumbered in the shadows.
Des Esseintes let his mind wander ... Like some great hanging of reverse ermine, the sky rose before him, black and dappled with white. An icy wind gusted, intensifying the wild scudding of the snow, inverting the proportions of black and white. The heraldic hanging of the sky turned itself over, becoming true white ermine, itself dappled with black by the tiny patches of night strewn among the snowflakes. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

FERNSBY, I'M ELOPING."
After settling Helen and Carys at his house, Rhys wasted no time in going to his office and summoning his private secretary for an emergency meeting.
The statement was received with impressive sangfroid: Mrs. Fernsby displayed no reaction other than adjusting her spectacles. "Where and when, sir?"
"North Wales. Tonight — Lisa Kleypas

Free will exists so free will can be given up freely. Such a person feels

no genuine delight if he or she is not drained empty. With all the delicious food and drink

in the world, true pleasure comes only with the extinction of pleasure and its replacement by

soul delight.

Those who have gone through fana into baqa, through annihilation into

that which has always been, become all body and all consciousness. With dissolving

begins some overwhelming joy. — Jalaluddin Rumi

I've never seen a German shepherd that liked spinach before.'
'She doesn't know she's a dog.'
'What does she think she is?'
'Well, she seems to think she's a special being that transcends classification.'
'Superdog?'
'Maybe so. — Haruki Murakami