Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubertwas an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary, for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 December 1821
CityRouen, France
CountryFrance
Happy are they who don't doubt themselves and whose pens fly across the page. I myself hesitate, I falter, I become angry and fearful, my drive diminishes as my taste improves, and I brood more over an ill-suited word than I rejoice over a well-proportioned paragraph.
. . . human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.
She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures.
Exuberance is better than taste.
COLD. Healthier than heat.
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.
Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.