Best 60 quotes of Theophile Gautier on MyQuotes

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

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

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

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

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

Cats are the tigers of us poor devils.

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

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

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

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

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

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

I am a man for whom the outside world exists.

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

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.

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

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat.

It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.

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.

I was born to travel and write verse.

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

Modesty was made for the ugly.

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

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

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.

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.

Sooner barbarity than boredom.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

And of a Sunday swarm the folk Under the honeysuckle vine, Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke, The sun, the melody, the wine.

For Art alone is great: The bust survives the state, The crown the potentate.

I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love!

I have often been charged with falsehood and hypocrisy, yet there lives not the man who would more gladly than I speak truthfully and lay bare his heart; but as I have not one idea, one feeling in common with the people who surround me, as the very first word I should speak truthfully would cause a general hue and cry, I have preferred to keep silent, or, if I do speak, to utter only stupid commonplaces which everyone has agreed to believe in.

It sometimes happens that a man who, up until now has believed himself to be gifted with perfect health, opens a medical book, either by chance or to pass the time, and on reading the pathological description of an illness, recognises that he is afflicted by it; enlightened by a fateful flash of insight, he feels at every symptom mentioned some obscure organ shuddering within him, or some hidden fibre of whose role in the body he had been unaware, and he pales as he realises that a death he thought was still a long way off is so imminent.

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory.

Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection! It will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness. It will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society, and leaving the company of creatures of its own society to be with you.