59 Quotes by Georges Rodenbach

The man did not attempt to deny it: 'Yes! It's the fault of this town.' The woman, pale and mournful, agreed: 'It's not our fault. Death is stronger than Love here.' ("The Dead Town")

That is the way it is, we always fall in love because of a detail, a nuance. It is a marker we set up for ourselves in the midst of the confusion, in the infinite space of love. The greatest passions come from such little causes.

—that exquisite sensual pleasure of collectors, who are a tactile species—

The beauty of sorrow is superior to the beauty of life.

The act of writing itself is like an act of love. There is contact. There is exchange too. We no longer know whether the words come out of the ink onto the page, or whether they emerge from the page itself where they were sleeping, the ink merely giving them colour.

What an austere landscape! Borluut was alone, with nothing but the sky and water. No footsteps, apart from his own, marked the immense expanse, the white desert which this ancient outer harbour of Bruges now was.

Then he returned to his theme: 'If so many lovers feel the desire to die and more and more die each day, while still in love, it is because love and death are linked by analogies, by underground passages, and communicate. One leads to the other. The one makes the other more acute, more intense. There is no doubt that death is a great stimulant of love. ("Love And Death")

Is that not what makes it great?' he retorted to his friend. 'Its beauty resides in its silence, and its glory in now only belonging to a few priests and poor people, that is to say to those who are purest because they have renounced the world. Its higher destiny is to be something which has outlived its time.

She sinks. She sinks in holy sadness. Like an Ophelia in tears she sinks.