Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Humility, Stupidity

  "Sentimental Education". Book by Gustave Flaubert, 1869.

  13 Copy quote

• It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Relationship, People, Perfect

  38 Copy quote

• We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Mean, Thinking, Laughing

  18 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Blood, Style, Literature

  10 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ignorance, History, Literature

  Letter to George Sand, September 8, 1871.

  12 Copy quote

• I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports.... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Love, Sexy, Thinking

  101 Copy quote

• There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Poetry

  75 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  I Hate You, Doe, Masters

  13 Copy quote

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  Dance, Stars, Long

  Madame Bovary pt. 1, ch. 12 (1857) (translation by Francis Steegmuller)

  85 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Men, Numbers

  Letter to Louise Colet, 14 June 1853

  10 Copy quote

• I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Believe, Thinking, Tranquility

  Gustave Flaubert, (Ivan Sergeevič) Turgenev (1985). “Flaubert and Turgenev, a Friendship in Letters: The Complete Correspondence”, Burns & Oates

  13 Copy quote

• Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, Giving, Wish

  22 Copy quote

• The future is the worst thing about the present.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Worst, Worst Things

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.8, Harvard University Press

  11 Copy quote

• Exuberance is better than taste.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Enthusiasm, Taste, Exuberance

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert (Illustrated)”, p.1193, Delphi Classics

  20 Copy quote

• A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Laughter, Men, Laughing

  Gustave Flaubert (1967). “Intimate notebook, 1840-1841”

  30 Copy quote
• 

  Read in order to live.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Reading, Order

  Gustave Flaubert (1951). “Letters”

  42 Copy quote

• Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Respect, Hate, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Return, Knows

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.121, Harvard University Press

  37 Copy quote

• What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Anger, Laughing

  Gustave Flaubert (1953). “Selected letters”

  10 Copy quote

• I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Men, Rumor

  Gustave Flaubert (2005). “November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style”, Hesperus Press

  75 Copy quote

• Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ocean, Math, Boys

  72 Copy quote

• By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dream, Trying

  Gustave Flaubert (1991). “Early Writings”, p.12, U of Nebraska Press

  10 Copy quote

• Everyone became brave from excess of terror.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Courage, Brave, Excess

  Gustave Flaubert (2005). “Salammbo”, p.98, Penguin UK

  8 Copy quote

• A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Men, Soldier

  76 Copy quote

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