Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Intelligence
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Prejudice
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
—Remy de Gourmont
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Existence
If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be—not understood, but divined.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Understanding
We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Education
Man is the inventor of stupidity.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Stupidity
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Beauty
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Science, Scientists
The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Critics, Criticism, Effort
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Perception
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Justice
Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Ideas, Simplicity
Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men
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.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Industry
Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
—Remy de Gourmont
Topics: Individuality
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Jean Cocteau French Poet, Artist
- Michel Houellebecq French Author
- Arthur Rimbaud French Poet
- Charles Baudelaire French Poet
- Victor Hugo French Novelist
- Anatole France French Novelist
- Marcel Proust French Novelist
- William Ernest Henley English Poet
- Persius Roman Poet
- Coventry Patmore English Writer
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