Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Gustave Flaubert (French Novelist)

Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was a French novelist and short-story writer. He was a central figure in the French realist school.

Flaubert is celebrated for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857,) one of the landmarks of 19th-century fiction. His portrayal of the romantic escapades, mounting debt, and suicide of a provincial doctor’s wife created outrage. Flaubert was tried and narrowly acquitted for “outraging public morals and religion.”

Flaubert’s other notable works include Salammbô (1862,) L’Éducation sentimentale (1869,) and Trois Contes (1877.)

Flaubert was also a prolific letter-writer, and his letters have been collected in several publications. His contemplations of the life of the novelist and art of fiction crowned his reputation as the consummate artist.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by 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

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

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