Quotes from Remy de Gourmont

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

It is fairly obvious that those who are in favour of the death penalty have more affinity with assassins than those who are not.

Try to put well in practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

For two thousand years Christianity has been telling us: life is death, death is life; it is high time to consult the dictionary.

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.

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.

Man has made use of his intelligence; he invented stupidity.

The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.

Man is the inventor of stupidity.

Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of language... the intervention of grammarians is almost always bad.

Most men who rail against women are railing at one woman only.

Most men who run down women are running down one woman only.

Thinking is hard work. One can't bear burdens and ideas at the same time

Art includes everything that stimulates the desire to live

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.

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.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.