Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 9

Sometimes I think I'm liquefying like an old Camembert.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

But some day sooner or later our passion would have cooled - inevitably - it's the way with everything human.

I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.

There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.

Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.

The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.

DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)

Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar - very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

To see one's name in print! Some people commit a crime for no other reason.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?

I have patience in all things - as far as the antechamber.

There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more