Quote

Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

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
Morality
Concern
Stupid
Imagination
Makes
Work
Every
False

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it
Gustave Flaubert
Image
How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.
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
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
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
Image
I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
What an elder sees sitting the young can't see standing.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Stupidity is an immovable object: you can't try to attack it wiithout being broken by it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
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
Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I have dreamed much and have done very little.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
Gustave Flaubert