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 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 FLAUBERTOn certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
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 FLAUBERTOne can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOf all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTYou 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 FLAUBERTLife is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTPleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe public wants work which flatters its illusions.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOne’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 FLAUBERTWhat is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOne mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTEverything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTStupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.
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 FLAUBERTHuman 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