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

— Edmond de Goncourt

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Variants

source: Joris-Karl Huysmans. Against Nature. Penguin books.

More quotes by Edmond de Goncourt

..the Impressionists are only.. ..makers of spots [of paint], and, what is more, spots stolen from the Japanese.

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.

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, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire.

All Edmond de Goncourt quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmond de Goncourt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.