Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 3

What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.

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?

One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them.

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

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.

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

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

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

After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.

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

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

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

We think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a naïve sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls kissing us and cuddling us in their arms; at the age of ten, we dream of love; at fifteen, love comes along; at sixty, it is still with us, and if dead men in their tombs have any thought in their heads, it is how to make their way underground to the nearby grave, lift the shroud of the dear departed women, and mingle with her in her sleep

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!

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.

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

The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.