THEOPHILE GAUTIER

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

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

A cat will be your friend, but never your slave.

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

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.

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

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

The cat is a dilettante in fur.

Sooner barbarity than boredom.

What I write is not for little girls.

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

Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

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

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

I was born to travel and write verse.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

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.

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