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
Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves.
The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.
One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being.
Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.
Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
It is necessary to sleep upon the pillow of doubt.
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.
But some day sooner or later our passion would have cooled - inevitably - it's the way with everything human.
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.