Remy de Gourmont Quotations

Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.

Nothing exists except by virtue of a disequilibrium, an injustice. All existence is a theft paid for by other existences; no life flowers except on a cemetery.

Man begins by loving love and ends by loving a woman. Woman begins by loving a man and ends by loving love.

Art includes everything that stimulates the desire to live; science, everything that sharpens the desire to know. Art, even the most disinterested, the most disembodied, is the auxiliary of life.

Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.

Man has made use of his intelligence; he invented stupidity.

It is well-nigh obvious that those who are in favor of the death penalty have more affinities with murderers than those who oppose it.

Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius.

The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.

In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.