All Joris-Karl Huysmans Quotes
- The only really indecent people are the chaste. Chaste
- The belief that man is an irresolute creature pulled this way and that by two forces of equal strength, alternately winning and losing the battle… All
- 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… All
- At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous… Adulterous
- Speaking of dust, ‘out of which we came and to which we shall return,’ do you know that after we are dead our corpses are… According
- Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life. Disgustingness
- Art is the only clean thing on earth, except holiness. Art
- There's no doubt about it - gardeners are the only true artists these days. Artist
- The modern painter…is an excellent couturier Couturier
- 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,… Contemplation
- Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who… Ah
- Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has… Affliction
- His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It… Antipathies
- (Baudelaire) had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those districts… Abandoned
- I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to… All
- How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is not a very… Compared
- Menacing lines of black tomorrows on the horizon. Black
- In this game he had acquired a great deal of muddled knowledge, more than one approximation and less than one certitude. And absence of energy,… Absence
- Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God...It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs… Begin
- ...he shrunk more and more from the realities of life and above all from the society of his day which he regarded with an ever… All
- Last comes the class of persons, of nervous organization and enfeebled vigour, whose sensual appetite craves highly seasoned dishes, men of a hectic, over-stimulated constitution.… Acrid
- He realized at last that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him Argument
- 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… Ark