Rémy De Gourmont Quotes

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.

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.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

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.

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.

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.

Man, in spite of his tendency towards mendacity, has a great respect for what he calls the truth. Truth is his staff in his voyage through life; commonplaces are the bread in his bag and the wine in his jug.

To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes—countrysides and figures, movements and gestures—how could he have a style, that is originality?

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

Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness.