64 Motivational Gustave Flaubert Quotes (NOVELIST)

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Top 14 Motivational Gustave Flaubert Quotes (WISDOM)

“I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports. When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.”
Gustave Flaubert

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. — **Travel** makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us. — One’s **duty** is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space. — An infinity of **passion** can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

The principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft. — The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings. — I **believe** that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

“Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.”
Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception. — There is no **truth**. There is only perception.

Talent is nothing but long patience. — **Talent** is nothing but long **patience**.

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes. — One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one **hopes**.

3 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Success

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”
Gustave Flaubert

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. — **Success** is a consequence and must not be a goal.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

9 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Writing and Poetry

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. — The art of **writing** is the art of discovering what you believe.

It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. — It’s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it. — I spent the **morning** putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living. — Writing is a **dog’s** life, but the only life worth living.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry. — **Poetry** is as precise a thing as geometry.

2 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Reading

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live. — Do not **read**, as **children** do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the **purpose** of instruction. No, read in order to live.

4 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Stupidity

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. — To be stupid, selfish, and have good **health** are three requirements for **happiness**, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.

2 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on History

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

2 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Art

“What 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 Flaubert

You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.

3 Gustave Flaubert on Women

“We think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a naïve sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls kissing us and cuddling us in their arms; at the age of ten, we dream of love; at fifteen, love comes along; at sixty, it is still with us, and if dead men in their tombs have any thought in their heads, it is how to make their way underground to the nearby grave, lift the shroud of the dear departed women, and mingle with her in her sleep.”
Gustave Flaubert

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding – places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust – or emptiness!”
Gustave Flaubert

3 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Life

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.

Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying. — Life must be a constant education; one must **learn** everything, from speaking to dying.

24 Gustave Flaubert Quotes To Ponder

“Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.”
Gustave Flaubert

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

“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