Quote

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

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
Conviction
Finally
Inner
Conscience
Calls
Literature
Vanity
Everything
Firm
Come
Basis
Bases

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Women want you to deceive them: they force you to, and if you resist, they blame you.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
My life which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love will turn out to be like everybody else's - monotonous, sensible, stupid.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!
Gustave Flaubert
Image
He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height
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
Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
To be simple is no small matter.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
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
Image
… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!
Gustave Flaubert
Image
But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.
Gustave Flaubert