Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

La conversation de Charles était plate comme un trottoir de rue, et les idées de tout le monde y défilaient dans leur costume ordinaire, sans exciter d'émotion, de rire ou de rêverie

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything.

Through the forest he pursued the she-monster whose tail coiled over the dead leaves like a silver stream; and he came to a meadow where women, with the hindquarters of dragons, stood around a great fire, raised on the tips of their tails. The moon shone red as blood in a pale circle and their scarlet tongues, formed like fishing harpoons, stretched out, curling to the edge of the flame.

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.

The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.

If there is on earth, and among all these things of nothing, a belief worthy of adoration, if there is anything holy, pure and sublime, anything answering that immoderate desire for the infinite and the vague that we call the soul, it is art.

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.

This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.

But she—her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

Emma was just like any other mistress; and the charm of novelty, falling down slowly like a dress, exposed only the eternal monotony of passion, always the same forms and the same language.

He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.

Never had he beheld such a magnificent brown skin, so entrancing a figure, such dainty, transparent fingers. He stood gazing in wonder at her work-basket as if it was something extraordinary. What was her name? Where did she live and what sort of life did she lead? What was her past? He wanted to know what furniture she had in her bedroom, the dresses she wore, the people she knew; even his physical desire for her gave way to a deeper yearning, a boundless, aching curiosity.

Beautiful things spoil nothing.

Financial demands, of all the rough winds that blow upon our love, (are) quite the coldest and the most biting.

He leaned against the writing desk and stayed there till nightfall, lost in sorrowful thoughts. After all, she had loved him.

Chaque sourire cachait un bâillement d'ennui, chaque joie une malédiction, tout plaisir son dégoût, et les meilleurs baisers ne vous laissaient sur la lèvre qu'une irréalisable envie d'une volupté plus haute.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel!

There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more

Charles went to kiss her shoulder. -Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.

Love, she believed, must come suddenly, with great thunderclaps and bolts of lightening - a hurricane from heaven that drops down on your life, overturns it, tears away your will like a leaf, and carries your whole heart with it off into the abyss.