“I have intended to rehabilitate the pariah, whatever form it may take; whether it be a buffoon, like Triboulet, a courtesan, like Marion Delorme, a poisoner, like Lucrezia Borgia, the oppressed, like the people. Those who say that I have practised art for art’s sake say a silly thing. No one, more than I, has practised art for society and humanity. I have always worked for this end, and have known what I wished to do.”—Victor Hugo.
“We know what it cost the First Empire to have displeased Châteaubriand, what it cost Louis Philippe to have offended Lamartine, Napoleon III. to have vexed Victor Hugo.”—Gaston Deschamps.
“The aptitude for commerce is an inferior aptitude. There are multitudes of banks in which fortunes are perpetuated. Is there an unbroken line of Hugos, of Ampères, of Courbets, which progresses incessantly from father to son? Commerce is an absurd criterion of merit, base in itself and still more degrading when it is regulated by laws like ours.”
Hélier, in Rosny’s Le Bilatéral.
“This morning I received the visit of the police commissary, my neighbour, accompanied by four alcoholics. They turned everything topsy-turvy in my rooms, mixed up my correspondence, rumpled my collection of prints, and all to seize, at the end, a wood-cut of Maurin and the works of Tolstoy.”
Meyrargues, in Victor Barrucand’s Avec le Feu.
“I believe it is impossible to-day for a great mind not to be somewhat anarchistic.”—Augustin Filon.
“My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual outside of all rules and of all social necessities.”—Emile Zola.