Remy de Gourmont

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.

Two elements are needed to form a truth - a fact and an abstraction.

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Thinking is hard work. One can't bear burdens and ideas at the same time.

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

Art includes everything that stimulates the desire to live.

In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.

Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.

Demons are like obedient dogs they come when they are called.

Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.

The woman who loves always smells good.

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.

Man has made use of his intelligence; he invented stupidity.

Women still remember the first kiss after men have forgotten the last.

Man is the inventor of stupidity.

Modesty is the delicate form of hypocrisy.

Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness.

If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be - not understood, but divined.

Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.

Try to put well in practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about.

Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war.