Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.

He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.

Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams.

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

I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

It was the fault of destiny!

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d'être violent et original dans vos Å"uvres.

We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

Qué mejor cosa que estarse por la noche al amor de la lumbre con un libro, mientras el viento pega en los cristales, y arde la lámpara...?

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

My life which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love will turn out to be like everybody else's - monotonous, sensible, stupid.

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

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.

On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was scattered among ruins.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier

The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.

God is in the details.