Gustave Flaubert quotes | Thousands Of Quotes

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

Gustave Flaubert

Man

Woman

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

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.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

Gustave Flaubert

Family

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

Gustave Flaubert

Charm

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

Gustave Flaubert

Feeling

Nothing

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

Gustave Flaubert

Blood

Style

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

Gustave Flaubert

Poetry

Geometry

Read in order to live.

Gustave Flaubert

Order

Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.

Gustave Flaubert

Reality

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.