M Gustave Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

I'm dazzled by your facility. In ten days you'll have written six stories! I don't understand it ... I'm like one of those old aqueducts: there's so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop. — 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

My wife and I have purchased two hybrids. We bought a 3 kw photovoltaic unit. We recycle and offset our carbon emissions on the Internet. We turn things off. But we also spend two nice salaries every year, and here's the dirty little secret - our environmental footprint is HUGE, I'm sure. We've all got to do what we can in our individual lives, but we've also got to drive the systemic changes that will make the big differences. — James Gustave Speth

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

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

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

The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of
I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters
I live and breathe them. — 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

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

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

I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times ... The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them. — Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes I think I'm liquefying like an old Camembert. — 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

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

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

You see? There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. Indeed that's what we provide in our own modest, humble, insignificant - (sighs deeply). Oh, fuck it.

-M. Gustave, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — Wes Anderson

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

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

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

To be awake is everything. — Gustave Meyrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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