Quotes from Joris-Karl Huysmans

describing the beauties of the seaside resort where you would like to be; by letting yourself be lulled by the waves created in your bath by the backwash of the paddle-steamers passing close to the pontoon;

Seigneur, prenez pitié du chrétien qui doute, de l'incrédule qui voudrait croire, du forçat de la vie qui s'embarque seul, dans la nuit, sous un firmament que n'éclairent plus les consolants fanaux du vieil espoir !

Chez les uns, c'est un retour aux âge consommés, aux civilisations disparues, aux temps morts ; Chez les autres, c'est un élancement vers le fantastique et vers le rêve, c'est une vision plus ou moins intense d'un temps à éclore dont l'image reproduit, sans qu'il le sache, par un effet d'atavisme, celle des époques révolues.

C'était le grand bagne de l'Amérique transporté sur notre continent.

But," thought Durtal, "seeing that there are so many more things betwixt heaven and earth than are dreamed of in anybody's philosophy, why not believe in the Trinity? Why reject the divinity of Christ? It is no strain on one to admit the Credo quia absurdum of Saint Augustine and Tertullian and say that if the supernatural were comprehensible it would not be supernatural, and that precisely because it passes the faculties of man it is divine. "And—oh,

Ah, when one has not the gift of rendering one's grief superbly and transforming it into literary or musical passages which weep magnificently, the best thing is to keep still about it.

More often than not, all that would be needed to complete the cure would be for the sick man to show a little imagination.

Baudelaire had gone further; he had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetations of the sick mind flourish.

If Baudelaire had made out among the hieroglyphics of the soul the critical age of thought and feeling, it was Poe who, in the sphere of morbid psychology, had carried out the closest scrutiny of the will.

he felt a glow of pleasure at the idea that here he would be too far out for the tidal wave of Parisian life to reach him, and yet near enough for the proximity of the capital to strengthen him in his solitude.

Movement, after all, seemed futile to him. He felt that imagination could easily be substituted for the vulgar realities of things.

Le démon ne peut rien sur la volonté, très peu sur l'intelligence et tout sur l'imagination.

Thus his penchant for artificiality and his love of eccentricity could surely be explained as the results of sophistical studies, super-terrestrial subtleties, semi-theological speculations; fundamentally, they were ardent aspirations towards an ideal, towards an unknown universe, towards a distant beatitude, as utterly desirable as that promised by the Scriptures.

It was still quite motionless and he felt it with his fingers; it was dead. Accustomed, no doubt, to an uneventful existence, to a humble life spent beneath its poor carapace, it had not been able to bear the dazzling splendor thrust upon it, the glittering cope in which it had been garbed, the gems with which its back had been encrusted, like a ciborium.

This imbecile sentimentality, combined with a ferociously practical sense, represented the dominant motive of the age.

At bottom, one might say that human wisdom consisted in the protraction of all things, in saying "no" before saying "yes," for one could manage people only by trifling with them.

No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.

An aunt, who though not a midwife was expert in that kind of work, helped bring forth the child, cleaning his face with butter and, to save money, powdering his thighs with some flour scraped from a crust of bread in lieu of talcum. "So you see, my boy, you come from humble stock," his Aunt Eudore would say, acquainting him of these petty details, and from an early age Jean didn't dare hope for any kind of good fortune in the future.

Progress is the hypocrisy in which vice is refined!

His successor was a tall, lanky youth, who with his pallid complexion and huge red hands had the air of a simpleton. He was punctual at least, arriving at six o'clock on the dot, but his uncleanliness was revolting: he was dressed in kitchen rags stiff with grease and dirt, his cheeks were smeared with flour and soot, and from his unwiped nose two rivulets of green snot streamed around his mouth.

But if in Love and Well-doing the infinite is approachable for certain souls, the out-of-the-world possibilities of Evil are limited.

One can take pride in going as far in crime as a saint in virtue.

He can verify that axiom of demonographers, that the Evil One dupes all persons who give themselves, or are willing to give themselves, to him.

Let's not malign the restaurants," said Des Hermies. "They afford a very special delight to the person who has the instinct of the inspector. I had an opportunity to gratify this instinct just the other night. I was returning from a call on a patient, and I dropped into one of these establishments where for the sum of three francs you are entitled to soup, two selected dishes, a salad, and a dessert.