Top 15 Gustave Flaubert Quotes

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

"Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)

Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.

It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?