black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

Gustave Flaubert

You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Brain Day Finding Hands Head Stay Word
One mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Happiness Life Philosophy Tree Woman
One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Acceptance Beautiful Feeling Greatness Society
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Art Believe Discover Inspirational Writing Yourself
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Life Particle Poetry
Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Ordinary Small Tender
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Confirm Ideal Reality
A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Death Friendship Yourself
My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Imagination Myself Reality
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

Human Music Rhythm Speech Stars
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

Believe Death Difficult Feeling Oneself Person
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Doubt Exhaust Myself
It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Communication Difficult Finding Hard Perfect Relationship
For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Beyond Circumference Herself Universe
What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Eat Life Surface Yourself
One’s existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Existence God Oneself Thinking

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Gustave Flaubert Quotes