Théophile Gautier

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

“The poet is a souvenir of the paradise.”

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

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

“Color is the taste of the eye.”

“Life is a horizontal fall.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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