“There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly.”

Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid.
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835; Paris: Charpentier, 1866), Préface, p. 21; Burton Rascoe (trans.) Mademoiselle de Maupin, and One of Cleopatra's Nights (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1925) p. xxv.

Original

Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid.

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Théophile Gautier 15
French writer 1811–1872

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Variant translations:
What we possess and what gives us strength is our joy in life, our interest in life in all its amoral facets. This is also the foundation for today's art. We do not even know the aesthetic laws.
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
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