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
Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.
—Gustave Flaubert
Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Money
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: One liners, Historians, Ignorance, History
One mustn’t allow acting to be like stockbroker—you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Identity
Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
—Gustave Flaubert
Success as I see it, is a result, not a goal.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Strength
Read in order to live.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Books, Literature, Reading
All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Poets, Poetry
There is no truth. There is only perception.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Truth
It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes. When I brood over these marvelous pleasures I have enjoyed, I would be tempted to offer God a prayer of thanks if I knew he could hear me. Praised may he be for not creating me a cotton merchant, a vaudevillian, or a wit.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Authors & Writing
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
Topics: Criticism
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Ideals, Reality, Ideal
Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears to dance when we long to move the stars.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Speech, Language
Our ignorance of history makes us libel to our own times. People have always been like this.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: The Past, Reflection
Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Work, Order
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Courage, Virtues
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Humility
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing
To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
—Gustave Flaubert
Topics: Stupidity, Selfishness
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Guy de Maupassant French Short-story Writer
- Jean Cocteau French Poet, Artist
- Jean Giono French Novelist
- Jules Renard French Author, Diarist
- Victor Hugo French Novelist
- Anatole France French Novelist
- Michel Houellebecq French Author
- Andre Gide French Novelist
- Marcel Proust French Novelist
- Remy de Gourmont French Poet, Writer
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