Theophile Gautier famous quotes

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

#Friendship #Philosophical #Cat

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Love #Heart #Carpe Diem

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

#Cat #Affection #Slave

I was born to travel and write verse.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Travel #Writing #Born

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

#Beautiful #Ugly

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

#Men #Moral #Fortitude

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

#Powerful #Argument #Persuasive

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

#Welcome #Brevity #Fatigue

It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Manners #Gentle #Prove

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Patience #Years #Meditation

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

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
-- Theophile Gautier

#Heart #Earth #Wonder

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

#Art #Imagination #Desire

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

#Body #Lice #Desert

Modesty was made for the ugly.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Ugly #Modesty #Made

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

#Heart #Animal #Purity

When we love - we grow
-- Theophile Gautier

#Greatest Love #Grows

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Beauty #Beautiful #Men

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

#Race #Heaven #Progress

Sooner barbarity than boredom.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Blessing #Boredom

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

#Lying #Cat #Evening

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

#Men #Artist #World

What I write is not for little girls.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Girl #Writing #Littles

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

#Loneliness #Sadness #Cat

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

#Cat #Affection #Fidelity

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Cat #Difficult

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Believe #Cat #Eye

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

#Teaching #Age #Doe

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Heart #Passion #Men

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Gratitude #Heart #Cutting

Cats are the tigers of us poor devils.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Cat #Devil #Poor

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Cat #Expression #Feet

Books follow morals, and not morals books.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Book #Moral

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

#Mean #Poet #Made

The cat is a dilettante in fur.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Cat #Fur

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

#Art #Choices #Details

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Eye

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

#Writing #House #Literature

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Art #Philosophical #Purpose

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

#Beauty #Art #Tasks

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Philosophical #Cat #Animal

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

#Satisfaction #Poet #Critics

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Travel #Horse #Moon

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

#Fate #Hands #Giving

I am a man for whom the outside world exists.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Men #Ego #World

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

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

#Beautiful #Process #Marble

High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city.
-- Theophile Gautier

#Art #Cities

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.
-- Theophile Gautier

#May #Aging #Silver