The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait Quotes

“the Earth in its turn is a body, having the genius of the planet for a soul. The sea, fecund in shipwrecks, is its sweat. The living beings on its surface are the molecules composing that great body.”
― Gabriel de Lautrec, The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

“The law of attraction governs the entire realm of matter. The corresponding phenomenon in the spiritual world is love. It is the most mysterious and the most universal of all laws.”
― Gabriel de Lautrec, The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

“Children, when they’re a little bit frightened, hardly ever think of being naughty. And souls, especially women’s souls, are children in eternity.”
― Gabriel de Lautrec, The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

“Considering the causes that led to the death of my friend Désormeaux, and the circumstances of that death, I cannot help experiencing, modest as I am, a very legitimate pride. Never was a wisely-conceived project put into action with more security, or procured a more profound joy to the perpetrator. To tell the truth, I had wanted to kill Désormeaux for a long time. His existence had become incompatible with mine. I was used to the ingratitude of men, but that of my friend Désormeaux was something so monstrous that it exceeded the extraordinary. For several years I admired that special case, and came to cultivate it curiously, incessantly giving the wretch new opportunities to prove that radiant ingratitude to me. I furnished him with benefits, as a sumptuous king heaps gold upon the artist of genius whose works magnify him, but it was only gradually that I tasted the full savor of his inverted gratitude.”
― Gabriel de Lautrec, The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait