Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.

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

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

Read in order to live.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

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.

Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

There are three thing in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.