Gustave Flaubert

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.

Be steady and well ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

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

And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.

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.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

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

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Language is 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.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

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.

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

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.

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.

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.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

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

A friend who dies its something of you who dies.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

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

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

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.

The public wants work which flatters its illusions.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream.

Read in order to live.

By trying to understand everything everything makes me dream.

Exuberance is better than taste.

Madame Bovary is myself.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

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

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

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

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.

Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves.

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

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.

The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.

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

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

Doubt ... is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

Its hard to communicate anything exactly and thats why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

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

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.

I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

Read much, but not many books.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.