Quote

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Art
Cannot
Informer
Way
Informers
Men
Critic
Soldier
Critics
Becomes
Artist

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Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
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Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
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I detest my fellow-beings and do not feel that I am their fellow at all
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I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter
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The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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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
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Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
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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.
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Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
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My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
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What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
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Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
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A thing derided is a thing dead a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
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As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.
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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.
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To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
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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.
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L'Ide e seule est e ternelle et ne cessaire. The idea alone is eternal and necessary.
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Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?
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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.
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