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

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

Gustave Flaubert

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

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Exuberance is better than taste.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Author Bio

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