Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.
– Remy de Gourmont
Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
– Remy de Gourmont
If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be - not understood, but divined.
– Remy de Gourmont
Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.
– Remy de Gourmont
Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.
– Remy de Gourmont
Man is the inventor of stupidity.
– Remy de Gourmont
Nothing exists except by virtue of a disequilibrium, an injustice. All existence is a theft paid for by other existences; no life flowers except on a cemetery.
– Remy de Gourmont
Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.
– Remy de Gourmont
The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.
– Remy de Gourmont
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
– Remy de Gourmont
The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.
– Remy de Gourmont
Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.
– Remy de Gourmont
We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.
– Remy de Gourmont
Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.
– Remy de Gourmont
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.