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Gustave Flaubert [1821-1880] French

Rank: 101
Novelist

Gustave Flaubert was an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary, for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics.

Art, Poetry, Happiness, Brainy, Communication, Death, Diet, Education, Faith, Freedom, Future, Health, History, Hope, Inspirational, Love, Science, Success, Truth, Women, Work

Quote	Tags	Rank
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.	Work	101
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.	Future, Success	102
There is no truth. There is only perception.	Truth	103
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.	Brainy	104
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.	Art, Faith, Freedom	105
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.	Inspirational	106
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.		107
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.	Happiness, Women	108
What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.		109
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.		110
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.	History	111
All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.	Poetry, Science	112
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.	Hope, Love	113
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.		114
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.	Death	115
Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.	Poetry	116
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.		117
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.		118
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.		119
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.	Art	120
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.	Happiness, Health	121
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.		122
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.		123
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.		124
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.	Art	125
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.		126
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.		201
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.		202
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.		203
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.		204
One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.		205
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.		206
The future is the worst thing about the present.		207
Read much, but not many books.		208
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.	Communication	209
Read in order to live.	Education	210
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.		211
What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.		212
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.		213
Exuberance is better than taste.		214
Madame Bovary is myself.		215
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.		216
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.		217
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.		218
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.		219
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.		220
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.		221
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.	Diet	222
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.		223
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.		224
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.		225
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.		226
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.	Poetry	301
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.		302
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.		303
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.		304
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.		305
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.		306
I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.		307
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.		308
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.		309
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.		310
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.		311
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.		312
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.		313
One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!		314
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.		315
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.		316
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.		317
One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.		318
The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.		319

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