To be simple is no small matter.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTTo be simple is no small matter.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOne’s existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe future is the worst thing about the present.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTEverything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTWriting history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOur ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTWhat 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 FLAUBERTThe whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTWhat seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTEverything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTWhat a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTAfter 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 FLAUBERTYou must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTFor him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTSuccess is a consequence and must not be a goal.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT