32 quotes
There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.
Cosmopolis (1892)
At certain moments, words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered.
Cosmopolis (1892)
The cruelest revenge of a woman is to remain faithful to a man.
Physiologie de l'Amour Moderne (1889)
"There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas," said Dorsenne to himself, when the Marquis had left him. "He is like the Socialists. What vigor of mind in that old wornout machine!"
Cosmopolis (1892)
There are conditions of blindness so voluntary that they become complicity.
Cosmopolis (1892)
There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength.
Cosmopolis (1892)
Some day you will know for yourself that it is almost as true to say that one recovers from all things as that there is nothing which does not leave its scar.
Have the courage to analyze great emotions to create characters who shall be lofty and true. The whole art of the analytical novel lies there.
Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room.
Andre Cornelis (1886)
Forgive me, Marie. I was suffering too much. I wanted to be done with it.
Andre Cornelis (1886)
The forests have taught man liberty.
Cosmopolis (1892)
There is no such thing as an age for love ... because the man capable of loving — in the complex and modern sense of love as a sort of ideal exaltation — never ceases to love.
This is what I counted upon to extort from him the favor of an interview which he certainly would refuse to a mere newspaper man.
The blade entered his body to the hilt.
No sooner had I done this thing than I recoiled, wild with terror at the deed.
Andre Cornelis (1886)
My remorse is not for having seized the weapon and struck the blow, it is that I owe to him — to him — that infamous good service which he did me — that I cannot to the present hour shake from me the horrible gift I have received from that man.
Andre Cornelis (1886)
Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices I had decided upon, there is always left a trace of envy for those who have triumphed in the melancholy struggle for literary supremacy.
I recognize the invincible influence of the dead in the pallor of her cheeks, the wrinkles in her eyelids, the white streaks in her hair. He disputes her with me from the darkness of his coffin; he takes her from me, hour by hour, and I am powerless against that love.
Andre Cornelis (1886)
Under the form of an interview I had done, and I knew it, the best work of my life.
We'll get even with him on his next volume. But you know, Labarthe, as long as you continue to have that innocent look about you, you can't expect to succeed in newspaper work.
There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in leading better lives?
Cosmopolis (1892)