Gustave Quotes & Sayings

You 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 Flaubert

I detest common heroes and moderate feelings, the sort that exist in real life — Gustave Flaubert

Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say - a weight here, at one's heart. — Gustave Flaubert

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them. — Gustave Courbet

Color must be thought, imagined, dreamed. — Gustave Moreau

Speech is a rolling mill which always stretches out the feelings that go into it. — Gustave Flaubert

I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see, and solely in what I feel. — Gustave Moreau

The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice - — Gustave Flaubert

Exuberance is better than taste. — Gustave Flaubert

How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood had been spent in the dark back-room of a shop in some town, she would now perhaps have been kindled by the lyric surgings of nature which only normally reach us as through the interpretation of a writer. — Gustave Flaubert

The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. — Gustave Flaubert

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen. — Gustave Flaubert

The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order. — Gustave Flaubert

The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet. — Gustave Flaubert

At last she sighed.
But the most wretched thing - is it not? - is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice. — Gustave Flaubert

On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down below, on the sidewalk, no one. This spreading silence increased the tranquility of things. In the distance, the caulkers' hammers tamped the hulls, and a heavy breeze brought the smell of tar. — Gustave Flaubert

From the primary school till he leaves the
university a young man does nothing but acquire books by heart without his
judgment or personal initiative being ever called into play. — Gustave Le Bon

In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up. — Gustave Flaubert

servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for — Gustave Flaubert

The citadel of Machaerus rose east of the Dead Sea on a basalt Peak shaped like a cone, girdled by four deep valleys; two about its sides, one in front, and the fourth behind. — Gustave Flaubert

Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation. — Gustave Flaubert

Such killings were part of the natural order of things, an inevitable consequence of belonging to a royal household. — Gustave Flaubert

Of all lies, art is the least untrue. — Gustave Flaubert

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work. — Gustave Flaubert

Think colour! Know how to imagine it! — Gustave Moreau

Emma still had a joyless look, and, habitually, at the corners of her mouth, she had that tightness that crumples the faces of old maids and bankrupts. — Gustave Flaubert

And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light. — Gustave Flaubert

Contact with the world, with which I have been steadily rubbing shoulders now for fourteen months, makes me feel more and more like returning to my shell. I hate the crowd, the herd. It seems to me always atrociously stupid or vile. — Gustave Flaubert

The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. — Gustave Flaubert

To lose time in the manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act — Gustave Le Bon

In every parting there comes a moment when the beloved is already no longer with us. — Gustave Flaubert

You should have a heart in order to feel other people's hearts. — Gustave Flaubert

Each dream finds at last its form; there is a drink for every thirst, and love for every heart. And there is no better way to spend your life than in the unceasing preoccupation of an idea
of an ideal. — Gustave Flaubert

What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds! — Gustave Flaubert

When I want to render these fine nuances, I do not find them in the subject, but in the nature of women in real life who seek unhealthy emotions and are too stupid even to understand the horror in the most appalling situations. — Gustave Moreau

The CASTE represents the highest degree of organisation of which the crowd is susceptible. — Gustave Le Bon

He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust - dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight. — Gustave Flaubert

One day, you find it,' repeated Rodolphe, 'one day, quite suddenly, when you've given up hope. Then new horizons stretch before you, and it's like a voice that cries: "Here it is!" You long to tell this person everything that's ever happened to you, to give everything, to sacrifice everything to this person! There's no need for words - you can read each other's thoughts. You've seen each other in your dreams.' (He was staring at her.) 'So, at last, it's here, this treasure you've been so desperately seeking, here, before you, bright and sparkling. But you still feel unsure, you daren't believe in it; you're dazzled, as if you'd come from out of the shadows into the light. — Gustave Flaubert

Emma was just like any other mistress; and the charm of novelty, falling down slowly like a dress, exposed only the eternal monotony of passion, always the same forms and the same language. — Gustave Flaubert

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. — Gustave Flaubert

Emma repeated to herself, "Good Heavens! Why did I marry? — Gustave Flaubert

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded. — Gustave Flaubert

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols. — Gustave Flaubert

Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives. — Gustave Courbet

I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter — Gustave Flaubert

Science has promised us truth ... It has never promised us either peace or happiness. — Gustave Le Bon

Well, you can say that about most anything, "it depends". Of course, it depends. - M. Gustave — Wes Anderson

People believe a little too easily that the function of the sun is to help the cabbages along. — Gustave Flaubert

When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inward and examine ourselves. — Gustave Courbet

Your person, your slightest movements seemed to me to possess a superhuman importance in the world. My heart used to raise like the dust in your footsteps. The effect you had on me was that of a moonlit night in summer, when all is perfume, soft shadows, pale light, and infinite horizons. For me your name contained all the delights of flesh and spirit, and I repeated it again and again, trying to kiss it with my lips. — Gustave Flaubert

On the hill there was a poor old tramp wandering about with his stick, in among the carriages. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and a squashed beaver-hat, bent down into the shape of a bowl, concealed his face; but, when he took it off, he exposed, instead of eyelids, two yawning bloodstained holes. The flesh was tattered into scarlet strips; and fluid was trickling out, congealing into green crusts that reached down to his nose, with black nostrils that kept sniffing convulsively. — Gustave Flaubert

Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment. — Gustave Flaubert

As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature's greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back. — Gustave Flaubert

Value change can change our pathetic capitulation to consumerism, which will help us psychologically as well as environmentally. — James Gustave Speth

Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet

There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one's vanity - the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women. — Gustave Flaubert

The French flag is the only one to have a staff a thousand feet tall. — Gustave Eiffel

I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it's of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don't need to go to church and kiss silver platters and dig into my pocket to fatten up a lot of humbugs who eat better than you or I do! Because he can be worshiped just as well in a wood, a field, or even just gazing at the ethereal vault, like the ancients. — Gustave Flaubert

The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts. — Gustave Flaubert

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. — Gustave Flaubert

My novel is the rock to which I cling and I know nothing of what is taking place in the world. — Gustave Flaubert

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man. — Gustave Flaubert

I have never looked for dream in reality or reality in dream. I have allowed my imagination free play, and I have not been led astray by it. — Gustave Moreau

But I have gone back to work; I try to intoxicate myself with ink, the way others intoxicate themselves with brandy, so as to forget the public disasters and my private sorrows. — Gustave Flaubert

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.) — Gustave Flaubert

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. — Gustave Courbet

Rich or poor, victors or vanquished, I make no allowance for any of them. I don't want love or hate, pity or anger. Sympathy is another matter. There is never enough of that. — Gustave Flaubert

Isn't 'not to be bored' one of the principal goals of life? — Gustave Flaubert

Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again. — Gustave Flaubert

To be awake is everything. — Gustave Meyrink

Because wanton or venal lips has murmured the same words to him, he only half believed in the sincerity of those he was hearing now; to a large extent they should be disregarded, he believed, because such exaggerated language must surely mask commonplace feelings: as if the soul in its fullness did not sometimes overflow into the most barren metaphors, since no one can ever tell the precise measures of his own needs, of his own ideas, of his own pain, and human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity. — Gustave Flaubert

She only wished to lean on something more solid than love. — Gustave Flaubert

I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel! — Gustave Flaubert

As there was no rational foundation for Frederick's complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any real misfortune, Martinon was unable to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this work-woman, he felt perfectly happy. — Gustave Flaubert

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, And are but slightly impressed by kindness, Which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness. Their sympathies have never been bestowed upon easy going masters, but the tyrants who vigorously oppressed them. It is to these latter that they always erect the loftiest statues. It is true that they willingly trample on the despot whom they have stripped of his power, but it is because having lost his power he resumes his place among the feeble who are to be despised because they are not to be feared. The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a Caesar, His insignia attract them, His authority overawes them, and his sword instils them with fear. — Gustave Le Bon

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness. — Gustave Flaubert

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right. — Gustave Flaubert

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

Iced champagne was served, and the feel of the cold wine in her mouth gave Emma a shiver that ran over her from head to toe. — Gustave Flaubert

She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. — Gustave Flaubert

She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. — Gustave Flaubert

When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women — Gustave Flaubert

In the case of everything that belongs to the realm of sentiment, religion, politics, morality, the affections, and antipathies, etc. The most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. — Gustave Le Bon

The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature. — Gustave Flaubert

In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on. — Gustave Flaubert

It seemed to her that certain parts of the world must produce happiness as they produced peculiar plants which will flourish nowhere else. — Gustave Flaubert

The images evoked by words being independent of their sense, they vary from age to age and from people to people, the formulas remaining identical. Certain transitory images are attached to certain words: the word is merely as it were the button of an electric bell that calls them up. — Gustave Le Bon

She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books. — Gustave Flaubert

You don't make art out of good intentions. — Gustave Flaubert

Their imaginations were fed by exile, a nourishment drawn not through roots but through rootlessness. My imagination, however, requires that I stay in the same city, on the same street, in the same house, gazing at the same view. Istanbul's fate is my fate. I am attached to this city because it has made me who I am. Gustave — Orhan Pamuk

I lead a bitter life, devoid of all external joy and in which I have nothing to keep me going but a sort of permanent rage, which weeps at times from impotence, but which is constant. — Gustave Flaubert

Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. — Gustave Flaubert

Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart. — Gustave Flaubert

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

With my burned hand, I write about the nature of fire. — Gustave Flaubert

The future is the worst thing about the present. — Gustave Flaubert

I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming to a head. — Gustave Flaubert

Without consistency and without a future, it has all the transitory characteristics of crowds. Its civilisation is now without stability, and at the mercy of every chance. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts. The civilisation may still seem brilliant because it possesses an outward front, the work of a long past, but it is in reality an edifice crumbling to ruin, which nothing supports, and destined to fall in at the first storm. To pass in pursuit of an ideal from the barbarous to the civilised state, and then, when this ideal has lost its virtue, to decline and die, such is the cycle of the life of a people. — Gustave Le Bon

the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, — Gustave Flaubert

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