Quotes By Gustave Flaubert

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

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

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

Read much, but not many books.

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

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

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

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

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.

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

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

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.

I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.

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.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

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.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

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

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

Exuberance is better than taste.

Read in order to live.

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

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

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

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

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

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

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.