QuotesTemple

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

Gustave Flaubert

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.

Gustave Flaubert

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

Gustave Flaubert

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Gustave Flaubert

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

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

Gustave Flaubert

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

Gustave Flaubert

The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Gustave Flaubert

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Gustave Flaubert

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

Gustave Flaubert

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

The future is the worst thing about the present.

Gustave Flaubert

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Gustave Flaubert

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

Gustave Flaubert

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

Gustave Flaubert

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

Gustave Flaubert

Stupidity is something unshakable nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert

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

Gustave Flaubert

The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

Gustave Flaubert

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

Gustave Flaubert