Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmont
Remy de Gourmontwas a French Symbolist poet, novelist, and influential critic. He was widely read in his era, and an important influence on Blaise Cendrars and Georges Bataille. The spelling Rémy de Gourmont is incorrect, albeit common and used by Ezra Pound in translations of his work...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth4 April 1858
CountryFrance
art art-is accomplices
Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.
intelligent men stupidity
Man has made use of his intelligence; he invented stupidity.
favors death-penalty penalties
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.
life lying thinking
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.
men ideas prejudice
Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.
tangled perception mind
The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.
art art-is accomplices
Art is the accomplice of love.
memories writing style
To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes-countrysides and figures, movements and gestures-how could he have a style, that is originality?
beauty men cities
The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.
different consciousness life-is
Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness