Rémy De Gourmont Quotes

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.

The greater part of a men who speak ill of women are speaking of a certain woman.

It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.

Intelligence is perhaps but a malady, -a beautiful malady; the oysters's pearl.

And there is neither beginning nor end, nor past nor future; there is only a present, at the same time static and ephemeral, multiple and absolute. It is the vital ocean in which we all share, according to our strength, our needs or our desires.

Everything, indeed, in a work of art should be unedited,-and even the words, by the manner of grouping them, of shaping them to new meanings,-and one often regrets having an alphabet familiar to too many half-lettered persons.

Nothing is better for "spiritual advancement" & the detachment of the flesh than a close reading of the "Erotic Dictionary.

Deprived of the infinite, man has become what he always was: a supernumerary.
He hardly counts; he forms part of the troupe called Humanity; if he misses a cue, he is hissed; and if he drops through the trapdoor another puppet is in readiness to take his place.

Man is an animal that "arrived"; that is all.

To be a member of such a crowd ... is not much to be far removed from solitude; the freedom of everyone is assured by the freedom to which everyone else lays claim.

To have a solid foundation of skepticism, -that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.