Gustave Flaubert Quotes

Read much, but not many books... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal... view

By: 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... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

Stupidity is something unshakable.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

Read in order to live... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

What an elder sees sitting.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

The cult of art gives pride.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

Of all lies, art is the least untrue... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

The future is the worst thing about the present... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

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... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity.. view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert

Exuberance is better than taste... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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... view

By: Gustave Flaubert

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

By: Gustave Flaubert