“What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.” — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“It is a delicious thing to write, whether well or badly - to be no longer yourself but to move in an… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.” — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Books are made not like children but like pyramids and they're just as useless! And they stay in the desert! Jackals piss… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“Has it ever happened to you," Léon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself:… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Books aren't made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids. There's some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
My God, this novel makes me break out in a cold sweat! Do you know how much I've written in five months,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
“When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
“But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share
