Gustave Flaubert

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order…

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being.

— Gustave Flaubert

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

— Gustave Flaubert

Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of…

— Gustave Flaubert

“He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.”

— Gustave Flaubert

But the most wretched thing, is it not-is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only…

— Gustave Flaubert

I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in…

— Gustave Flaubert

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away…

— Gustave Flaubert

“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…

— Gustave Flaubert

“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each…

— Gustave Flaubert

“Why was it? Who drove you to it?' She replied, 'It had to be, my dear!' 'Weren't you happy? Is it my…

— Gustave Flaubert

You'll always have to deal with bastards, being lied to, deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that's to be expected and you must…

— Gustave Flaubert

Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it…

— Gustave Flaubert

“I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it's of no importance to me, who put us here on…

— Gustave Flaubert

“as though the soul’s abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can ever give the…

— Gustave Flaubert

We think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a naïve sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls…

— Gustave Flaubert

Le charme de la nouveaute , peu a' peu tombant comme un ve" t ement, laissait voir a' nu l'e ternelle monotonie…

— Gustave Flaubert

I took Eugene Sue's Arthur from the reading-room. It's indescribable, enough to make you vomit. You have to read this to realize…

— Gustave Flaubert

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous,…

— Gustave Flaubert

“He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are…

— Gustave Flaubert

“How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood…

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

“Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.”

— 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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

“This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish…

— Gustave Flaubert

“The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We’re lucky to be…

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

“Surely it could not have been a dove God had chosen to speak through, since doves could not talk.”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

— Gustave Flaubert

“But vilifying those we love always alienates us from them to a certain extent. Idols should not be touched: the gilding comes…

— Gustave Flaubert

“Having no intercourse with anyone, she lived in the torpid state of a sleep-walker.”

— Gustave Flaubert

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

— Gustave Flaubert