Gustave Flaubert Quotes | GloryQuotes

Gustave Flaubert Quotes About Art

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert Quotes About Work

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

Gustave Flaubert

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Gustave Flaubert

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

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

More Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

Gustave Flaubert

The future is the worst thing about the present.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Gustave Flaubert

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Gustave Flaubert

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

Gustave Flaubert

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Gustave Flaubert

Browse 71 quotes attributed to Gustave Flaubert, listed in the source data as a French Novelist, organized around themes such as Art, Work, Career. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.