62 Quotes by Joris-Karl Huysmans

The only people who are worth knowing are either saints, scoundrels or madmen; at least their conversation is always interesting. Sensible people are dull by definition, because they are always harping on to the same boring tune about everyday life. They form part of the crowd, the more intelligent part perhaps, but the crowd for all that, and I’m sick of them.

The heart, said to be man’s noblest organ, has the same shape as the penis, commonly supposed the most ignoble; the symbolism is not inappropriate, because the love which comes from the heart soon extends to the organ which it resembles.

Ah, when one has not the gift of rendering one's grief superbly and transforming it into literary or musical passages which weep magnificently, the best thing is to keep still about it.

How inferior the human machine is, compared to man-made machines. They can be decoked, unscrewed, oiled and parts replaced. Decidedly, nature is not a very wonderful thing.

 'If only I had a passion of some kind; if I loved women, or my work; if I liked coffee, dominoes or cards, I could eat out,' he thought, 'because I'd never spend long enough at home. But alas, nothing amuses me, nothing interests me; and what's more my stomach is wrecked!' 

Menacing lines of black tomorrows on the horizon.

Persons of good sense are necessarily dull, because they revolve over and over again the tedious topics of everyday life.

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.

Every one has a sum of physical and moral suffering to pay, and whoever does not settle it here below, defrays it after death; happiness is only lent, and must be repaid; its very phantoms are like duties paid in advance on a future succession of sorrows.