Gustave Flaubert Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Gustave Flaubert Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Gustave Flaubert
2
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
3
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
4
One mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert
5
The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.
Gustave Flaubert
6
There is no truth. There is only perception.
Gustave Flaubert
7
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
Gustave Flaubert
8
What an elder sees sitting; the young can’t see standing.
Gustave Flaubert
9
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Gustave Flaubert
10
Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert
11
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Gustave Flaubert
12
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
Gustave Flaubert
13
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.
Gustave Flaubert
14
There is no truth. There is only perception.
Gustave Flaubert
15
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
16
Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert
17
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Gustave Flaubert
18
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
Gustave Flaubert
19
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert
20
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
21
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
22
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
Gustave Flaubert
23
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert
24
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
Gustave Flaubert
25
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
26
What an elder sees sitting; the young can’t see standing.
Gustave Flaubert
27
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
Gustave Flaubert
28
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert
29
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
Gustave Flaubert
30
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Gustave Flaubert
31
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
32
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
33
What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
Gustave Flaubert
34
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
Gustave Flaubert
35
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
36
All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert
37
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Gustave Flaubert
38
A memory is a beautiful thing, it’s almost a desire that you miss.
Gustave Flaubert
39
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert
40
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave Flaubert
41
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
42
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
Gustave Flaubert
43
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert
44
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Gustave Flaubert
45
A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.
Gustave Flaubert
46
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
47
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.
Gustave Flaubert
48
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
Gustave Flaubert
49
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
50
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
Gustave Flaubert
51
One mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert
52
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
Gustave Flaubert
53
One mustn’t look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
Gustave Flaubert
54
Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert
55
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave Flaubert
56
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Gustave Flaubert
57
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Gustave Flaubert
58
Madame Bovary is myself.
Gustave Flaubert
59
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Gustave Flaubert
60
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
Gustave Flaubert
61
I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.
Gustave Flaubert
62
The future is the worst thing about the present.
Gustave Flaubert
63
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
Gustave Flaubert
64
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.
Gustave Flaubert
65
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
Gustave Flaubert
66
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Gustave Flaubert