Quotes from Theophile Gautier

The cat is a dilettante in fur.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!

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

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

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

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

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

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

A cat will be your friend, but never your slave.

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

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

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection!

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

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.

Sooner barbarity than boredom.

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

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

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

I am a man for whom the outside world exists.

Everything passes—Robust artAlone is eternal.The bustSurvives the city.

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

I was born to travel and write verse.

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

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.