3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Stupidity is something unshakable nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert One mustn’t ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
3 December 2020 Gustave Flaubert Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
