Théophile Gautier Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

Théophile Gautier
To a woman, the romances she makes are more amusing than those she reads.

Théophile Gautier
How many have died without having given even one kiss to their chimera!

Théophile Gautier
Of all ruins, the ruin of man is the saddest to contemplate.

Théophile Gautier
Many benefit by the caresses they have not inspired; many a vulgar reality serves as a pedestal to an ideal idol.

Théophile Gautier
Virginity, mysticism, melancholy, — three unknown words, — three new maladies brought in by Christ.

Théophile Gautier
Fancy demanding feeling from poetry! That's not the main thing at all. Radiant words, words of light, full of rhythm and music, that's poetry.

Théophile Gautier
O poets! what injury you have done us, and how right Plato was to banish you from his republic! How your ambrosia has rendered more bitter our absinthe! How have we found our lives more barren and more desolate, after having turned our eyes toward the sublime perspectives which your dreams have opened in the infinite!

Théophile Gautier
There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly.

Théophile Gautier
There was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow, undulating, and full of majesty.

Théophile Gautier
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

Théophile Gautier
Critical lice are like bodily lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.

Théophile Gautier
To profess one thing and to do another occurs very often, especially with those who continually boast of their virtue.

Théophile Gautier
I am a man for whom the visible world exists.

Théophile Gautier
Marble, pearl, rose, dove, all may disappear: the pearl melts, the marble breaks, the rose fades, the bird escapes.

Théophile Gautier
Beauty is often but a splendid cloak which conceals the imperfections of the soul.

Théophile Gautier
Women like audacity: when one astounds them he interests them; and when one interests them, he is very sure to please them.

Théophile Gautier
What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love.

Théophile Gautier
I can not see why women are so desirous of imitating men. I could understand the wish to be a boa constrictor, a lion, or an elephant; but a man! that surpasses my comprehension.

Théophile Gautier
Eyes so transparent that through them one sees the lucent soul.

Théophile Gautier
Woman is an idol that man worships, until he throws it down.

Théophile Gautier
Friendship that begins between a man and a woman will soon change its name.

Théophile Gautier
Paradise, as described by the theologians, seems to me too musical: I confess that I should be incapable of listening to a cantata that would last ten thousand years.

Théophile Gautier
Everything passes. Robust art alone is eternal, the bust survives the city.

Théophile Gautier
It is better to sacrifice one's love of sarcasm than to indulge it at the expense of a friend.

Théophile Gautier
I have remarked that those who love women most, and are most tender in their intercourse with them, are most inclined to speak ill of them, as if they could not forgive them for not being as irreproachable as they wish them to be

Théophile Gautier
Such in the Landes of our world is the poet's stance;
When he receives no wound, his treasure he'll retain.
With such deep cut mankind his heart must also lance,
To make him spill his verse, his gold tears' gushing rain!

Théophile Gautier
This century boasts of progress! Have they invented a new mortal sin? Unfortunately there are but seven, as before — the number of the daily falls of a saint, which is very little.

Théophile Gautier
Everything passes.–
Only robust art is eternal.
The bust outlives the city.
And the simple coin
Unearthed by a peasant
Reveals the image of an emperor.

Théophile Gautier
The affectation of virtue which characterizes this century would be very ludicrous, if it were not very tiresome.

Théophile Gautier