Gustave Flaubert Quotes

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

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

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

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

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Read much, but not many books.

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

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

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

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

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

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

She (Madame Bovary) had that indefinable beauty that comes from happiness, enthusiasm, success - a beauty that is nothing more or less than a harmony of temperament and circumstances.

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.

Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity.

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming idiotic oneself.

In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on.

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.

The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.

The artist ought no more to appear in his work than God in nature.

I detest my fellow-beings and do not feel that I am their fellow at all.

Print: to see one's name in print! - Some people commit a crime for no other reason.