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
PinBe regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.PinTravel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.PinTo be simple is no small matter.PinOne’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.PinAn infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.PinOne can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.PinThe principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.PinI 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
PinThere is no truth. There is only perception.PinTalent is nothing but long patience.PinReality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.PinOne 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
PinSuccess is a consequence and must not be a goal.PinNothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
9 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Writing and Poetry
PinI 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.PinThe art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.PinIt’s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.PinYou must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.PinI spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it.PinWriting is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living.PinOne never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!PinThere is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.PinPoetry is as precise a thing as geometry.
2 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Reading
PinDo not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.PinRead in order to live.
4 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Stupidity
PinStupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.PinEarth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.PinTo be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.PinStupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions. We are a thread, and we want to know the whole cloth.
2 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on History
PinWriting history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.PinOur 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
PinYou 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
PinWoman 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
PinWhat 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.PinLife is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.PinLife 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
PinA 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
PinIt’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.PinI tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.PinPleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.PinHuman 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.PinShe wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.PinBut the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.PinLove is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.PinI love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.PinOne’s existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.PinI don’t believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.PinOne mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.PinWhat wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!PinAll you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.PinThe heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.PinFor him, the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.PinWe must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity. I think that’s what being really human means.PinThe deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.PinA memory is a beautiful thing, it’s almost a desire that you miss.PinThe future is the worst thing about the present.PinThe author, in his work, must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.PinArtists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.