“ In Paris, where raillery is so quick to throw emotion out the window, silence, in a roomful of clever people after a story, is the most flattering of all marks of success Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Passions are less mischievous than boredom for passions tend to diminish and boredom increase. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Dandies, who – as you know - scorn all emotions as being beneath them, and do not believe, like that simpleton Goethe, that astonishment can ever be a proper feeling for the human mind. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Beauty is single. Only ugliness is multiple, and even then its multiplicity is soon exhausted. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ The Devil teaches women what they are – or they would teach it to the Devil if he did not know. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ They had...finished their lives before their death – which is not always the end of life and often comes long before the end. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ For in Paris, whenever God puts a pretty woman there (the streets), the Devil, in reply, immediately puts a fool to keep her. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ We priests are the surgeons of souls, and it is our duty to deliver them of shameful secrets they would fain conceal, with hands careful to neither wound no pollute. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Night, which in Autumn seems to fall from the sky so suddenly, chilled us... Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Extreme civilization robs crime of its frightful poetry, and prevents the writer from restoring it. That would be too dreadful, say those good souls who want everything to be prettified, even the horr… Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ He was terrified by the sublime horror of it, for intensity of feeling, carried to this degree, is sublime. ("A Woman's Vengeance") Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Men are all the same. Novelty amongst themselves displeases and upsets them – but if the novelty is wearing a skirt, they go crazy f Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ She was one of those women of good family who no longer exist, elegant, distinguished, and haughty, whose pallor and thinness seem to say, 'I am conquered by the era, like all my breed. I am dying, bu… Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ And, in fact, if these crimes appeal less to the senses, they appeal more to the mind; and the mind, in the last analysis, is the profoundest part of us. For the novelist, therefore, there is a new ty… Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ I did not want to be taken for a fool – the typical French reason for performing the worst of deeds without remorse. Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
“ Fools – in other words most people – imagine that it would be a wonderful achievement to be able to recover our youth; but those who know life are aware how little it would profit us. ("A Woman's Veng… Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
