Gustave Flaubert Quotes

148 Sourced Quotes

Discharge. Rejoice when it leaves any affected part, and express astonishment that the human body can contain so much matter.

Gustave Flaubert
To see one's name in print! Some people commit a crime for no other reason.

Gustave Flaubert
We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Gustave Flaubert
A little science takes your religion from you; a great deal brings you back to it.

Gustave Flaubert
Dentists. All untruthful. They use steel balm: are said to be also chiropodists. Pretend to be surgeons, just as opticians pretend to be physicists.

Gustave Flaubert
Asp: Animal known through Cleopatra's basket of figs.

Gustave Flaubert
Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

Gustave Flaubert
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
They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.

Gustave Flaubert
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
Dissection. An outrage upon the majesty of death.

Gustave Flaubert
Cerumen. Human wax. Should not be removed: it keeps insects from entering the ears.

Gustave Flaubert
Cholera: You catch it from eating melons. The cure is lots of tea with rum in it.

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 principal thing in this world is to keep one's soul aloft.

Gustave Flaubert
Alabaster. Its use is to describe the most beautiful parts of a woman's body.

Gustave Flaubert
Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

Gustave Flaubert
I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.

Gustave Flaubert
Crayfish. Female of the lobster. Walks backward. Always call reactionaries "crayfish."

Gustave Flaubert
SMARH: How vast creation is! I see the planets rise, I see the fiery stars driven along... Space opens out as I rise, worlds revolve around me, and I am the center of this bustling creation.

Gustave Flaubert
The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

Gustave Flaubert
Body. If we knew how our body is made, we wouldn't dare move.

Gustave Flaubert
One's existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

Gustave Flaubert
My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing words, without fear, without compassion, without love, without God. I am called science.

Gustave Flaubert
Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

Gustave Flaubert
One must laugh and weep, love, work, enjoy and suffer, in short vibrate as much as possible in all his being.

Gustave Flaubert
Sea-sickness. To avoid, all you have to do is think of something else.

Gustave Flaubert
Mercury. Kills the patient with the disease.

Gustave Flaubert