Joris-Karl Huysmans

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

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

The loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

Last comes the class of persons, of nervous organization and enfeebled vigour, whose sensual appetite craves highly seasoned dishes, men of a…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

In this game he had acquired a great deal of muddled knowledge, more than one approximation and less than one certitude. And…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

Only the chaste are truly obscene.

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

The modern painter…is an excellent couturier

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“...indeed it is very true that, just as the finest air in the world is vulgarized beyond all bearing once the public…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“There are two ways of ridding ourselves of a thing which burdens us, casting it away or letting it fall. To cast…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“…he noticed that the free thinkers, the doctrinaires of the bourgeoisie, people who claimed every liberty that they might stifle the opinions…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“From black-rimmed plates they ate turtle soup and eaten Russian rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, salted mullet-roe, smoked Frankfurt black puddings,…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

The belief that man is an irresolute creature pulled this way and that by two forces of equal strength, alternately winning and…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

There's no doubt about it - gardeners are the only true artists these days.

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“But that which remains for ever incomprehensible is the initial horror, the horror imposed on each of us, of having to live,…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

...he shrunk more and more from the realities of life and above all from the society of his day which he regarded…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“the surplice and alb signify innocence; the cord that serves as a girdle is an emblem of chastity and modesty; the amice,…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“This landscape of abomination is in a state of flux. Gilles now sees that the trunks are covered in frightful tumours and…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“Those who visited that exhibition-room found an auto-de-fé of immense skies in ignition, globes blotted out by bleeding suns; hemorrhages of stars,…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend it reflecting on it.”

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“And yet the point of view from which his ideas on art had sprung was a simple one: for him, literary schools…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is…

— Joris-Karl Huysmans