Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Everyone became brave from excess of terror.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

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.

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.

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.

I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.

I grew up in a hospital and as a child I played in the dissecting room

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

Madame Bovary is myself.

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

On spinach: I dislike it, and am happy to dislike it because if I liked it I would eat it, and I cannot stand it.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.