Quote

A thing derided is a thing dead a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

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
Men
Derided
Laughter
Stronger
Laughing
Dead
Suffering
Thing

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?
Gustave Flaubert
Image
We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.
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
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
For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
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
Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.
Gustave Flaubert