Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

About Gustave Flaubert:

Gustave Flaubert is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.

Gustave Flaubert

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admir...

Gustave Flaubert

One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

Gustave Flaubert

I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from t...

Gustave Flaubert

When will someone write from the point of view of a joke, that is to say the way God sees events from above?

Gustave Flaubert

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

Gustave Flaubert

You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Gustave Flaubert

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

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.

Gustave Flaubert

Author Bio

  • NameGustave Flaubert
  • Description1821-1880 French writer
  • BornDecember 12, 1821
  • DiedMay 8, 1880
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • Works