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Goncourt brothers Quotes

d. 1896 France

France
Historians
Novelists

Random Goncourt brothers quote

9 quotes

If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.

The art of pleasing consists in never speaking of oneself and always talking to others of themselves. Every one is aware of this, yet how often is it forgotten.

In the language of the bourgeoisie, the grandeur of the words is in direct proportion to the pettiness of the sentiments.

A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.

Critics must have been created on the seventh day. Because if God had created them on the first day, what on earth would they have done?

There are two great currents in the history of humanity: baseness, which makes conservatives; and envy, which makes revolutionaries.

The English are crooked as a nation and honest as individuals. The contrary is true of the French, who are honest as a nation and crooked as individuals.

There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what untrained eyes consider abominable.

How is it that in no epoch of history, in no place on earth, a sect of wise men has been formed with the aim of making human life die out in the face of the cruelty of its evils?

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Goncourt brothers (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.