Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Quotes

He was terrified by the sublime horror of it, for intensity of feeling, carried to this degree, is sublime. ("A Woman's Vengeance")

He had a reputation in society as a man with a lively wit, whose gaiety was pleasant and formidable – which all gaiety must be in a society which would despise you if, while amusing it, you did not make it tremble a little. ("A Woman's Vengeance")

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, but I despise you,' and - devil take me! - plebeian as I am, and though it is not very philosophical , I cannot help finding that beautiful.

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

They had...finished their lives before their death – which is not always the end of life and often comes long before the end.