The Angels of Perversity Quotes

“The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“Extraordinarily excessive sensuality it may be .. but it all comes down to the same thing in the end, and one means is surely as good as another, since the end obtained is always the same. In any case the exceptional, endlessly repeated, is no different than the banal; and unceasing recapitulation can add nothing, in the end, to the sum of experience. I am weary and hopeless three times the dupe. Why have you trained me in the shame of abominable sins?”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“She lit the candelabras which stood on the mantelpiece. Placed at the head of the bead, on a side-table, they looked like two burning bushes, their flames solemn and inextinguishable. But beneath that avalanche of light the dead man became hideous: the pale head displayed a whiteness more livid than the bedsheet, ghastly against the cambric of the pillow; pits of shadow were hollowed out under the eyes and his nose was villainously elongated, and even the mouth seemed wicked – his mouth, which was so very gentle!
”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“The snow kept on falling, and penetrated so deeply into her prone body that she had no other feeling than that of wanting to die, buried under these adorable snow kisses, to be embalmed in the snow - and then to be swept off, in a final gust, to the land of eternal snow, to the fabled infinite mountains where the darling little adultresses lie in a perpetual swoon, ceaselessly and firmly caressed by all the perverse angels.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“Ah! I wish I had the courage to work for the debasement of my contemporaries. What good work it would be to defile their daughters: to insinuate something obscene into the infantile hands which caress each paternal beard and cheek; to poison them, even at the risk of perishing ourselves; to do as those Spanish monks did, who drank death in order that they might persuade the French rabble which had violated their monastery to do likewise.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“Go then,” I said to her, silently. “Be the wife of another, in the eyes of the world. I am refused the joy of possessing you in any sense that the world would call possession, but in truth you belong to me. Almighty God knows our mutual will, our mutual consent, and that is all that matters. It must suffice.”
And so it was that I felt a certain bitter joy when the priest said: “Whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder. …”
I slipped away as stealthily as an artful thief.
The blackbirds sang no more in the leaf-laden crowns of the chestnut trees, and the sharply-scented lilac-blossoms were fading at last – were as faded now as memories of the lost passions of youth. …”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“The edge of the great veil touched my head when it was momentarily inflated by the draught from an open window. It seemed to me then that a breath of passion had caught us and lifted us up, Edith and myself … Edith the pale; Edith the fair; and me … towards the unattainable paradise of betrayed and perjured lovers.
As she returned to her mother’s side, her sad eyes lingered for a moment upon me; then, abruptly, she withdrew into the enveloping folds of the veil. She departed – forever!
The sharp and cruelly ironic scent of the lilacs drifted in through the window.
She went to be married.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“The two sisters were Edith and Elphège; Alberic was to marry Edith, the elder of the two. But which of the two was I looking at now, so fair and so pale? Was she so pale and tremulous because she was to be married tomorrow, or was she merely to be the bridesmaid, more anxious on the bride’s behalf than the bride herself? Which was she, whose face had reawakened in my soul the memory of youthful passion and childhood affection?
It had to be Elphège. Undoubtedly, it was Elphège – Elphège the pale, Elphège the fair.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity

“Goodbye, Arabella – you belong to me! I must go, but you must follow me. I will be there – every night, I will wait for you beneath the magnolia, for you must never know any other love but mine. None but mine, Arabella! Ah, what proof you shall have of my love! What proof! What proof! Your soul must be reserved for me.”
And with a smile which wrought a diabolical transfiguration of the shadows which lay upon his wasted face, he continued to repeat himself. His voice struggled against its imminent extinction, perhaps devoid of any sense but perhaps mysteriously infused with some unholy wisdom drawn from beyond the grave, saying: “Beneath the magnolia, Arabella, beneath the magnolia!”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity