Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

It never occurred to her that if the drainpipes of a house are clogged, the rain may collect in pools on the roof; and she suspected no danger until suddenly she discovered a crack in the wall.

We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.

Anyone's death always releases something like an aura of stupefaction, so difficult is it to grasp this irruption of nothingness and to believe that it has actually taken place.

But since everything has its reason, and the fantasy of an individual seems to me just as legitimate as the appetite of a million men and capable of holding just as important a place in the world, we must… live for our vocation, climb up into our ivory tower, and there, like a dancer amid her perfumes, remain alone with our dreams.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

The future is the worst thing about the present.

The author in his work should be like God in the universe: everywhere present and nowhere visible.

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

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.

There was an air of indifference about them [the male guests], a calm produced by the gratification of every passion… that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one's vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.

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.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.