Quotes By Gustave Flaubert

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

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.

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

The future is the worst thing about the present.

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

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

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

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

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

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

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.