Top 55 Quotes & Sayings by Theophile Gautier

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

A cat will be your friend, but never your slave.

The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn't exist.

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave.

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

Sooner barbarity than boredom.

Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel.

I was born to travel and write verse.

You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal... one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.

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

I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.

Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.

Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.

The cat is a dilettante in fur.

I am a man for whom the outside world exists.

What I write is not for little girls.

High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!

Fortune loves to give bedroom slippers to people with wooden legs, and gloves to those with no hands.

The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it's purpose, which is quite enough.

With all women gentleness is the most persuasive and powerful argument.

Literature has nothing to do with usefulness; the most useful place in any house is the toilet.

It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave.

Yes I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart

White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments.

The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.

Our busy age does not always have time to read, but it always has time to look.

Whatever may have been said of the satiety of pleasure and of the disgust which usually follows passion, any man who has anything of a heart and who is not wretchedly and hopelessly blasé feels his love increased by his happiness, and very often the best way to retain a lover ready to leave is to give one's self up to him without reserve.

Sometimes he sits at your feet looking into your face with an expression so gentle and caressing that the depth of his gaze startles you.

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.

It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads.

It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.

Modesty was made for the ugly.

Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.

To extract beauty from one's own milieu is one of the most difficult tasks of art.

The pleasure in traveling consists of the obstacles, the fatigue, and even the danger. What charm can anyone find in an excursion when he is always sure of reaching his destination, of having horses ready waiting for him, a soft bed, an excellent supper, and all the eases and comfort he can enjoy in his own home! One of the great misfortunes of modern life is the want of any sudden surprise, and the absence of all adventure. Everything is so well arranged.

Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly.

Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended perfectibility of the human race which is continually being dinned into our ears!

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection!

Those horses must have been Spanish jennets, born of mares mated with a zephyr; for they went as swiftly as the wind, and the moon, which had risen at our departure to give us light, rolled through the sky like a wheel detached from its carriage.

The years I have squandered in puerile excitement, in going hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in endeavoring to make myself worthy of being loved.

[Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire.

No one is truly dead until they are no longer loved.

When we love - we grow

There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and man's needs are ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.

The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals

Cats are the tigers of us poor devils.

[A cat] will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society.

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat.

[A cat] will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness.

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

Sometimes he will sit on the carpet in front of you, looking at you with eyes so melting, so caressing and so human, that they almost frighten you, for it is impossible to believe that a soul is not there.