Théophile Gautier

“Nothing is really beautiful but that which is useless; everything useful is ugly.”

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

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.”

“It is a great sign of mediocrity to praise always moderately.”

“Life is a horizontal fall.”

“Our life is a book that writes itself and whose hero is the reader.”

“Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the exercise of thought which seeks to understand the world and to make the world understood.”

“I am a man for whom the visible world exists.”

“A cat is a beautiful and graceful creature that lives in a state of perpetual grace.”

“The poet is a souvenir of the paradise.”

“To be beautiful is the ambition of women and the desire of men.”

“Color is the taste of the eye.”

“Hasheesh is a protest against the sordidness of civilization.”

“I have two passions: gold and women; I have two functions: to love and to be loved.”