694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.

I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.

Exuberance is better than taste.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.

What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!