694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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

[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

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

Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?

Everything is there: the love of Art.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

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.

It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return.