Jean Lorrain Quotes

You see, the strangeness of my case is that now I no longer fear the invisible, I’m terrified by reality.

The madness of the eyes is the lure of the abyss. Sirens lurk in the dark depths of the pupils as they lurk at the bottom of the sea, that I know for sure - but I have never encountered them, and I am searching still for the profound and plaintive gazes in whose depths I might be able, like Hamlet redeemed, to drown the Ophelia of my desire.

Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution.

The charm of horror only tempts the strong

It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror.

Ingratitude' is the name which avatars of Narcissus give to the success of others.

The larvae! The scent of young blood entices and draws them closer. There's no need to venture into antiquity to evoke the shades of the dead.

The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect ... and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations.

Ensor sees with his imagination, but his vision is perfectly accurate, of an almost geometric precision. He is one of the very few who can really see. Like you, he has an obsession with masks; he is a seer as you and I are. The common herd, of course thinks that he is mad.*****************You shall see what sort of man Ensor is, and what a marvellous insight he has into the invisible realm where our vices are created... those vices for which our faces make masks.