Top 40 Théophile Gautier Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.”

— Théophile Gautier

2. “The purity of a person’s heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals.”

— Théophile Gautier

3. “I was born to travel and write verse.”

— Théophile Gautier

4. “When we love – we grow.”

— Théophile Gautier

5. “There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and man’s needs are ignoble and disgusting like his own poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.”

— Théophile Gautier

6. “Only that which serves no end is beautiful; everything useful is ugly.”

— Théophile Gautier

7. “Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.”

— Théophile Gautier

8. “It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads.”

— Théophile Gautier

9. “If you are worthy of its affection, a cat will be your friend but never your slave.”

— Théophile Gautier

10. “No one is truly dead until they are no longer loved.”

— Théophile Gautier

11. “Fortune loves to give bedroom slippers to people with wooden legs, and gloves to those with no hands.”

— Théophile Gautier

12. “Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!”

— Théophile Gautier

13. “Literature has nothing to do with usefulness; the most useful place in any house is the toilet.”

— Théophile Gautier

14. “Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.”

— Théophile Gautier

15. “High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city.”

— Théophile Gautier

16. “Our busy age does not always have time to read, but it always has time to look.”

— Théophile Gautier

17. “The cat is a dilettante in fur.”

— Théophile Gautier

18. “The arts teach and moralise by their beauty alone, not by translating a philosophical or social formula. For the truly artistic person, painting has itself as it’s purpose, which is quite enough.”

— Théophile Gautier

19. “The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.”

— Théophile Gautier

20. “To extract beauty from one’s own milieu is one of the most difficult tasks of art.”

— Théophile Gautier

21. “Modesty was made for the ugly.”

— Théophile Gautier

22. “Any man who does not have his inner world to translate is not an artist.”

— Théophile Gautier

23. “Sooner barbarity than boredom.”

— Théophile Gautier

24. “Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel.”

— Théophile Gautier

25. “I am a man for whom the outside world exists.”

— Théophile Gautier

26. “Those horses must have been Spanish jennets, born of mares mated with a zephyr; for they went as swiftly as the wind, and the moon, which had risen at our departure to give us light, rolled through the sky like a wheel detached from its carriage.”

— Théophile Gautier

27. “Brevity never fatigues; therefore, brevity is always a welcome guest.”

— Théophile Gautier

28. “Sometimes he will sit on the carpet in front of you, looking at you with eyes so melting, so caressing and so human, that they almost frighten you, for it is impossible to believe that a soul is not there.”

— Théophile Gautier

29. “Critical lice are like body lice, which desert corpses to seek the living.”

— Théophile Gautier

30. “Yes I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart.”

— Théophile Gautier

31. “What well-bred woman would refuse her heart to a man who had just saved her life? Not one; and gratitude is a short cut which speedily leads to love.”

— Théophile Gautier

32. “Cats are the tigers of us poor devils.”

— Théophile Gautier

33. “I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity.”

— Théophile Gautier

34. “Books follow morals, and not morals books.”

— Théophile Gautier

35. “With all women gentleness is the most persuasive and powerful argument.”

— Théophile Gautier

36. “Sometimes he sits at your feet looking into your face with an expression so gentle and caressing that the depth of his gaze startles you.”

— Théophile Gautier

37. “It is gentle manners which prove so irresistible in women.”

— Théophile Gautier

38. “Good heavens! what a foolish thing is this pretended perfectibility of the human race which is continually being dinned into our ears!”

— Théophile Gautier

39. “The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn’t exist.”

— Théophile Gautier

40. “The years I have squandered in puerile excitement, in going hither and thither, in seeking to force nature and time, I ought to have spent in solitude and meditation, in endeavoring to make myself worthy of being loved.”

— Théophile Gautier

41. “You do not become a critic until it has been completely established to your own satisfaction that you cannot be a poet.”

— Théophile Gautier

42. “It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave.”

— Théophile Gautier

43. “It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat.”

— Théophile Gautier

44. “White men should exhibit the same insensibility to moral tortures that red men do to physical torments.”

— Théophile Gautier

45. “What I write is not for little girls.”

— Théophile Gautier

46. “The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.”

— Théophile Gautier