Quote

The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.

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
Way
Count
Unhappy
Avoid
Atheism
Close
Rest
Art
Nothing

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Doesn't it seem to you, asked Madame Bovary, that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Talent is a long patience.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
A thing derided is a thing dead a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
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
Life must be a constant education one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
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
Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.
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
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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
DOCTOR. Always preceded by 'The good'. Among men, in familiar conversation, 'Oh! balls, doctor!' Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: 'you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.'
Gustave Flaubert
Image
How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Gustave Flaubert