Joris-Karl Huysmans Quotes

“Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend it reflecting on it.”

“Only the chaste are truly obscene.”

“There's no doubt about it - gardeners are the only true artists these days.
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“Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God... It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.”

“Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.”

“His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar.”

“Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form.”

“Art and prayer are the only decent ejac*lations of the soul.”

“Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life.
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