Quotes By Gustave Flaubert

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.

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

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

There is no truth. There is only perception.

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

Exuberance is better than taste.

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

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

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

Read in order to live.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

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.

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.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

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.

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

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

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

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

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