Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTFor him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
More Gustave Flaubert Quotes
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Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Exuberance is better than taste.
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 -
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.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
I have dreamed much and have done very little.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT






