Gustave Flaubert Quotes
But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space.
After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.
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's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.
You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.
You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything
Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.
You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.
Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.
Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
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.
For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.
It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.
