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

Quelle bassesse que de penser toujours au prolongement de son existence! La vie n'est bonne qu'à la condition d'en jouir. (ch. III)

Gustave Flaubert

How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like...

Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

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.

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Cheer up,' said the captain's son. 'Life is long, and we are young.

Gustave Flaubert

And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.

Gustave Flaubert

It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

Gustave Flaubert

The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or em...

Gustave Flaubert

Having no intercourse with anyone, she lived in the torpid state of a sleep-walker.

Gustave Flaubert

In March 1853 she was afflicted with a pain in the chest; her tongue seemed to be covered with a film; leeches failed to make her breathing any easier.

Gustave Flaubert

On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down below, on the sidewalk, no one. This spreading silence increase...

Gustave Flaubert

Author Bio

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