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Gustave Flaubert Quotes



Quotes by Gustave Flaubert - (59 quotes)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Aging category:

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Art category:

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Art category:

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Artists category:

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Artists category:

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Beauty category:

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Belief category:

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Books category:

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Books category:

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Boredom category:

What is it, O Lord, this permanent lassitude that I drag about me? ...Deianira's tunic was no less completely welded to Hercules' back than boredom to my life! It eats into it more slowly, that's all. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Criticism category:

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Critics category:

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Critics category:

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Desire category:

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Desire category:

For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Doubt category:

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Emotion category:

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Emotion category:

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Failure category:

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Fear category:

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Form category:

One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Friendship category:

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Future category:

The future is the worst thing about the present. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Genius category:

I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Happiness category:

To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Happiness category:

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Hope category:

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Humanity category:

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Idealism category:

Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Interest category:

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Invention category:

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Knowledge category:

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Language category:

Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Language category:

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Life category:

Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Love category:

Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Love category:

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Morality category:

What is beautiful is moral; that is all there is to it. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Originality category:

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Patience category:

Talent is long patience. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Perfection category:

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Poetry category:

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Poetry category:

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Politics category:

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Realism category:

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Reality category:

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Reality category:

Don't talk to me about your hideous reality! What does it mean - reality? ...There is nothing less natural than Michelangelo; there is nothing more powerful! (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Revelation category:

Reveal art; conceal the artist. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Simplicity category:

To be simple is no small matter. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Style category:

Style is as much... the soul as it is the flesh of a work. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Style category:

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Subject category:

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Success category:

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Taste category:

Exuberance is better than taste. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Truth category:

There is no truth. There is only perception. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Vanity category:

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Words category:

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect. (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Writing category:

What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in! (Gustave Flaubert)

Gustave Flaubert - From the Writing category:

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. (Gustave Flaubert)