694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Each dream finds at last its form; there is a drink for every thirst, and love for every heart. And there is no better way to spend your life than in the unceasing preoccupation of an idea--of an ideal.

The artist must be in his work like God in his Creation, invisible and all-powerful, so that he is felt everywhere but not seen.

A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.

Books are made not like children but like pyramids and they're just as useless! And they stay in the desert! Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

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.

Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.

Equality is slavery. That is why I love art.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.