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

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

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.
Gustave Flaubert

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

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
Gustave Flaubert

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

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Gustave Flaubert

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

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.
Gustave Flaubert


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.
Gustave Flaubert

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert

Exuberance is better than taste.
Gustave Flaubert

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

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.
Gustave Flaubert

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Gustave Flaubert

I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.
Gustave Flaubert

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

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