To be simple is no small matter.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTTo be simple is no small matter.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTDo not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOur ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTRead in order to live.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe future is the worst thing about the present.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTNothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
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 FLAUBERTExuberance is better than taste.
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’s existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTOne never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTShe wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTTo be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThe principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTLife must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT