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 of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it's back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And… — 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 at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them. — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“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 Image
When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. — 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
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 Image
One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
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 Image
