Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubertwas an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary, for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 December 1821
CityRouen, France
CountryFrance
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.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.
Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?
Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
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.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.
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.