Quote

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.

Gustave Flaubert

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Literature
Powerful
Artist
Sense
Must
Work
Invisible
Never
Everywhere
Creation

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Antiquite . en tout ce qui s'y rapporte: Est poncif, embe tant! etc. Antiquity. And everything to do with it, cliche d and boring.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Everything is there: the love of Art.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Mediocrity cherishes rules as for me, I hate them I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I have dreamed much and have done very little.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
Gustave Flaubert