Edmond de Goncourt quotes

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world. (Edmond de Goncourt)
If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
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 first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Man is a mind betrayed, not served, by his organs. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Laughter is the mind's intonation. There are ways of laughing which have the sound of counterfeit coins. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity. (Edmond de Goncourt)
History is a novel that has been lived, a novel is history that could have been. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
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. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt
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. View quote
Edmond de Goncourt