Quotes by Joris-Karl Huysmans

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Expressing his own personality, the artist also expresses the pattern in which this personality was shaped and thus becomes the expression of several factors: race, social class. era, so the expression of a phase in human evolution.

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Art is for man an instrument of self-transcendence: because man is not only what he actually is; he seeks to be something other than what he is. If this effort did not exist, humanity would stagnate and be no more interesting than mineral matter...

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We are grateful to the artist for saying so clearly what we have always felt but have not been able to express.

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The world that literature depicts must be the world in which human beings are born, live, and ultimately die; the world where I know triumph and humiliation, hope and despair; the world of sufferings and joys, of madness and common sense, of folly, cunning and wisdom, of reason in battle with passion, of instincts and conventions, of common language and incommunicable sensations and feelings; of innate differentiations, rules, roles, solemn or absurd rituals imposed by the prevailing culture.

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The ability to attempt poetic impressions is common. The ability to give poetic expression to poetic impressions is very rare.

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A writer... must be of his era.