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

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
By working one can bend fortune. She is fond of crafty men.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more
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
Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
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
La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe le o u' nous battons des me lodies a' faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.
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
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Life must be a constant education one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
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
What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Everything is there: the love of Art.
Gustave Flaubert