Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity. — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form. — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share
Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
“There is not one single invention of (Nature's), however subtle or impressive it may be thought to be, that the human spirit cannot create;… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
“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… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
“He wanted, in short, a work of art both for what it was in itself and for what it allowed him to bestow on… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
(Baudelaire) had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
“What he wanted was colours which would appear stronger and clearer in artificial light. He did not particularly care if they looked crude or… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
“The Louis XIII style in perfumery, composed of the elements dear to that period - orris-powder, musk, civet and myrtle-water, already known by the… — Joris-Karl Huysmans Copy Share Image
