Gustave Flaubert quotes - page 4

Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart. (Gustave Flaubert)
What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul's possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream. View quote
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. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal. (Gustave Flaubert)
Thought is the greatest of pleasures -pleasure itself is only imagination-have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams? View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
You don't make art out of good intentions. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it. (Gustave Flaubert)
She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she” of all the poetry books. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
The public wants work which flatters its illusions. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness. View quote
Gustave Flaubert