Quotes by Edmond de Goncourt

“I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

“[He] went on to say that during all those years he had done nothing at all, that all he had felt had been a need to live, to live actively, violently, noisily, a need to sing, to make music, to roa...”

“If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”

“A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.”

“The reason for the sadness of this modern age and the men who live in it is that it looks for the truth in everything and finds it.”

“Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the fi...”

“Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.”

“Baudelaire had supper at the table next to ours. He was without a cravat, his shirt open at the neck and his head shaved, just as if he were to be guillotined. A single affectation: his little hand...”

“We asked ourselves whether, in these days of equality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrop...”

“She was, so to speak, an impersonal creature, because of her great heart; a woman who did not belong to herself: God seemed to have made her only to give her to others.”