Joris-Karl Huysmans Quotes

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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Water, Insane, Devil

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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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Dream, Stupidity, Solitude

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.7, Booklassic

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There's no doubt about it - gardeners are the only true artists these days.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Artist, Doubt, These Days

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Only the chaste are truly obscene.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Chaste, Obscene

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Menacing lines of black tomorrows on the horizon.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Black, Horizon, Lines

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...he shrunk more and more from the realities of life and above all from the society of his day which he regarded with an ever growing horror,--a detestation which had reacted strongly on his literary and artistic tastes; he refused, as far as possible, to have anything to do with pictures and books whose subjects were in any way connected with modern existence.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Book, Reality, Growing

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2006). “Against the Grain: Easyread Large Edition”, p.361, ReadHowYouWant.com

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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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Thinking, Literature, Excuse

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1972). “L-bas (Down There).”, p.213, Courier Corporation

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No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, - a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Girl, Kings, Men

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain: (À rebours)”, p.44, BoD – Books on Demand

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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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Dream, Night, Ideas

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.4, Booklassic

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At a period when Literature was wont to attribute the grief of living exclusively to the mischances of disappointed love or the jealousy of adulterous deceptions, he had said not a word of these childish maladies, but had sounded those more incurable, more poignant and more profound: wounds that are inflicted by satiety, disillusion and contempt in ruined souls tortured by the present, disgusted with the past, terrified and desperate of the future.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Grief, Past, Profound

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain: (À rebours)”, p.111, BoD – Books on Demand

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He realized at last that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Comfort, Lasts, Argument

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain: (À rebours)”, p.170, BoD – Books on Demand

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Art and prayer are the only decent ejaculations of the soul.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Art, Prayer, Ejaculation

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1958). “Down There (Là Bas): A Study in Satanism”

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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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Humanity, Mind, World

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1959). “Against nature: a new translation of À rebours”

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The modern painter…is an excellent couturier

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Modern, Excellent, Painter

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The loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Tunes, Vulgar

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.83, Booklassic

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Art is the only clean thing on earth, except holiness.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Art, Holiness, Clean

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Far from seeking to justify, as does the Church, the necessity of torments and afflictions, he cried, in his outraged pity: 'If a God has made this world, I should not wish to be that God. The world's wretchedness would rend my heart.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Heart, Wish, Church

Joris-Karl Huysmans (2015). “Against the Grain”, p.68, Booklassic

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Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! —Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Christian, Believe, Heart

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In the matter of animals I love only cats, but I love them unreasonably for their qualities and in spite of their numerous faults. I have only one, but I could not live without a cat.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Cat, Animal, Quality

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(Baudelaire) had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetations of the sick mind flourish. There, near the breeding ground of intellectuals aberrations and disease of the mind - the mysterious tetanus, the burning fever of lust, the thyphoids and yellow fevers of crime – he had found, hatching in the dismal forcing-house of ennui, the frightening climacteric of thoughts and emotions.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Yellow, Sick, House

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I wish to confound all these people, to create a work of art of a supernatural realism and of a spiritualist naturalism. I wish to prove... that nothing is explained in the mysteries which surround us.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Art, People, Wish

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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.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Nature, Men, Machines

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1989). “The Road from Decadence: From Brothel to Cloister : Selected Letters of J.K. Huysmans”

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Speaking of dust, ‘out of which we came and to which we shall return,’ do you know that after we are dead our corpses are devoured by different kinds of worms according as we are fat or thin? In fat corpses one species of maggot is found, the rhizophagus, while thin corpses are patronized only by the phora. The latter is evidently the aristocrat, the fastidious gourmet which turns up its nose at a heavy meal of copious breasts and juicy at bellies. Just think, there is no perfect equality, even in the manner in which we feed the worms.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Thinking, Dust, Perfect

Joris-Karl Huysmans (1972). “L-bas (Down There).”, p.30, Courier Corporation

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The belief that man is an irresolute creature pulled this way and that by two forces of equal strength, alternately winning and losing the battle for his soul; the conviction that human life is nothing more than an uncertain struggle between heaven and hell; the faith in two opposed entities, Satan and Christ - all this was bound to engender those internal discords in which the soul, excited by the incessant fighting, stimulated as it were by the constant promises and threats, ends up by giving in and prostitutes itself to whichever of the two combatants has been more obstinate in its pursuit.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Struggle, Fighting, Winning

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In this game he had acquired a great deal of muddled knowledge, more than one approximation and less than one certitude. And absence of energy, a curiosity that was too sharp to be crushed immediately, a lack of order in his ideas, a weakening of his spiritual boundaries, which were promptly twisted, an excessive passion for running along forked roads and wearying of the path as soon as he had started on it, mental indigestion demanding varied dishes, quickly tiring of the foods he desired, digesting almost all, but badly, was his state.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

Running, Spiritual, Passion

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Joris-Karl Huysmans

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Born: February 5, 1848
Died: May 12, 1907
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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