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A Man, At Least, Is Free; He Can Explore Every Passion, Every Land, Overcome Obstacles, Taste The Most Distant Pleasures. But A Woman Is Continually Thwarted. Inert And Pliant At The Same Time, She Must Struggle Against Both The Softness Of Her Flesh And Subjection To The Law. Her Will, Like The Veil Tied To Her Hat By A String, Flutters With Every Breeze; There Is Always Some Desire Luring Her On, Some Convention Holding Her Back.

-Gustave Flaubert

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A Man, At Least,

Gustave Flaubert

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A Man, At Least, Is Free; He Can Explore Every Passion, Every Land, Overcome Obstacles, Taste The Most Distant Pleasures. But A Woman Is Continually Thwarted. Inert And Pliant At The Same Time, She Must Struggle Against Both The Softness Of Her Flesh And Subjection To The Law. Her Will, Like The Veil Tied To Her Hat By A String, Flutters With Every Breeze; There Is Always Some Desire Luring Her On, Some Convention Holding Her Back.

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It Is Always Sad To Leave A Place To Which One Knows One Will Never Return. Such Are The Melancolies Du Voyage: Perhaps They Are One Of The Most Rewarding Things About Traveling.

But The Most Wretched Thing, Is It Not-is To Drag Out, As I Do, A Useless Existence. If Our Pains Were Only Of Some Use To Someone, We Should Find Consolation In The Thought Of The Sacrifice.

She Remembered The Heroines Of Novels She Had Read, And The Lyrical Legion Of Those Adulterous Women Began To Sing In Her Memory With Sisterly Voices That Enchanted Her. Now She Saw Herself As One Of Those Amoureuses Whom She Had So Envied: She Was Becoming, In Reality, One Of That Gallery Of Fictional Figures; The Long Dream Of Her Youth Was Coming True.

Put All Your Rage And Madness Into Your Work And Live As Orderly A Life As Possible.

Everything Is There: The Love Of Art.

I Took Eugene Sue's Arthur From The Reading-room. It's Indescribable, Enough To Make You Vomit. You Have To Read This To Realize The Pitifulness Of Money, Success, And The Public. Literature Has Become Consumptive. It Spits And Slobbers, Covers Its Blisters With Salve And Sticking-plaster, And Has Grown Bald From Too Much Hair-slicking. It Would Take Christ Of Art To Cure This Leper.

Didn't Love, Like A Plant From India, Require A Prepared Soil, A Particular Temperature? Sighs In The Moonlight, Long Embraces, Tears Flowing Over Hands Yielded To A Lover, All The Fevers Of The Flesh And The Languors Of Tenderness Thus Could Not Be Separated From The Balconies Of Great Châteaux Filled With Idle Amusements, A Boudoir With Silk Blinds, A Good Thick Carpet, Full Of Pots Of Flowers, And A Bed Raised On A Dais, Nor From The Sparkle Of Precious Stones And Shoulder Knots On Servants' Livery.

Le Charme De La Nouveaute , Peu A' Peu Tombant Comme Un Ve" T Ement, Laissait Voir A' Nu L'e Ternelle Monotonie De La Passion, Qui A Toujours Les Me" Mes Formes Et Le Me" Me Langage. The Charm Of Novelty, Falling Little By Little Like A Robe, Revealed The Eternal Monotony Of Passion, Which Has Always The Same Forms And The Same Language.

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

A Man, At Least, Is Free; He Can Explore Every Passion, Every Land, Overcome Obstacles, Taste The Most Distant Pleasures. But A Woman Is Continually Thwarted. Inert And Pliant At The Same Time, She Must Struggle Against Both The Softness Of Her Flesh And Subjection To The Law. Her Will, Like The Veil Tied To Her Hat By A String, Flutters With Every Breeze; There Is Always Some Desire Luring Her On, Some Convention Holding Her Back.

But Some Day Sooner Or Later Our Passion Would Have Cooled - Inevitably - It's The Way With Everything Human.

Sooner Or Later

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.

What Stops Me From Taking Myself Seriously, Even Though I Am Essentially A Serious Person, Is That I Find Myself Extremely Ridiculous, Not In The Sense Of The Small-scale Ridiculousness Of Slap-stick Comedy, But Rather In The Sense Of Ridiculousness That Seems Intrinsic To Human Life And That Manifests Itself In The Simplest Actions And The Most Extraordinary Gestures.

Tout Ce Qu'on Invente Est Vrai, Soi-en Sure. La Poesie Est Une Chose Aussi Precise Que La Geometrie.

The Citadel Of Machaerus Rose East Of The Dead Sea On A Basalt Peak Shaped Like A Cone, Girdled By Four Deep Valleys; Two About Its Sides, One In Front, And The Fourth Behind.

Doubt … Is An Illness That Comes From Knowledge And Leads To Madness.

The Denigration Of Those We Love Always Detaches Us From Them In Some Degree. Never Touch Your Idols: The Gilding Will Stick To Your Fingers.

She Loved The Sea For Its Storms Alone, Cared For Vegetation Only When It Grew Here And There Among Ruins. She Had To Extract A Kind Of Personal Advantage From Things And She Rejected As Useless Everything That Promised No Immediate Gratification — For Her Temperament Was More Sentimental Than Artistic, And What She Was Looking For Was Emotions, Not Scenery.

I Detest My Fellow-beings And Do Not Feel That I Am Their Fellow At All

Noble Characters And Pure Affections And Happy Scenes Are Very Comforting Things. They're A Refuge From Life's Disillusionments.

For Some Men, The Stronger Their Desire, The More Difficult It Is For Them To Act.

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.

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.

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?

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.

It Is Always Sad To Leave A Place To Which One Knows One Will Never Return.

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

By Dint Of Railing At Idiots, One Runs The Risk Of Becoming An Idiot Oneself.

In The Dark Room A Cloud Of Yellow Dust Flew From Beneath The Tool Like A Scatter Of Sparks From Under The Hooves Of A Galloping Horse. The Twin Wheels Turned And Hummed. Binet Was Smiling, His Chin Down, His Nostrils Distended. He Seemed Lost In The Kind Of Happiness Which, As A Rule, Accompanies Only Those Mediocre Occupations That Tickle The Intelligence With Easy Difficulties, And Satisfy It With A Sense Of Achievement Beyond Which There Is Nothing Left For Dreams To Feed On.

Daguerreotype Will Take The Place Of Painting. (see Photography.) (from The Dictionary Of Received Ideas, Assembled From Notes Flaubert Made In The 1870s.)

I Am Irritated By My Own Writing. I Am Like A Violinist Whose Ear Is True, But Whose Fingers Refuse To Reproduce Precisely The Sound He Hears Within.

What Wretched Poverty Of Language! To Compare Stars To Diamonds!

I Have The Handicap Of Being Born With A Special Language To Which I Alone Have The Key.

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

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.

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

To Be Stupid, Selfish, And Have Good Health Are Three Requirements For Happiness, Though If Stupidity Is Lacking, All Is Lost.

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.'

I Do Not Like To "interest" The Public With Myself.

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

That Man Has Missed Something Who Has Never Left A Brothel At Sunrise Feeling Like Throwing Himself Into The River Out Of Pure Disgust.

Of All The Icy Blasts That Blow On Love, A Request For Money Is The Most Chilling.

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.

Stupidity Consists In Wanting To Reach Conclusions. We Are A Thread, And We Want To Know The Whole Cloth.

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

For A Long Time Now My Heart Has Had Its Shutters Closed, Its Steps Deserted, Formerly A Tumultuous Hotel, But Now Empty And Echoing Like A Great Empty Tomb.

I Spent The Morning Putting In A Comma And The Afternoon Removing It.

Years Passed; And He Endured The Idleness Of His Intelligence And The Inertia Of His Heart.

The One Way Of Tolerating Existence Is To Lose Oneself In Literature As In A Perpetual Orgy.

Concern For Morality Makes Every Work Of The Imagination False And Stupid.

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

And He Beholds The Moon; Like A Rounded Fragment Of Ice Filled With Motionless Light.

She Would Have Liked Not To Be Alive, Or To Be Always Asleep.

He Was Bored Now When Emma Suddenly Began To Sob On His Breast; And His Heart, Like The People Who Can Only Stand A Certain Amount Of Music, Became Drowsy Through Indifference To The Vibrations Of A Love Whose Subtleties He Could No Longer Distinguish.

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.

Me And My Books In The Same Apartment, Like A Gherkin In Its Vinegar.

My Kingdom Is As Wide As The Universe And My Wants Have No Limits. I Go Forward Always, Freeing Spirits And Weighing Words, Without Fear, Without Compassion, Without Love, Without God. I Am Called Science.

Sentences Must Stir In A Book Like Leaves In A Forest, Each Distinct From Each Despite Their Resemblance.

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.

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.

Reality Does Not Conform To The Ideal, But Confirms It.

The Whole Dream Of Democracy Is To Raise The Proletarian To The Level Of Stupidity Attained By The Bourgeois.

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

I Will Cover You With Love When Next I See You, With Caresses, With Ecstasy. I Want To Gorge You With All The Joys Of The Flesh, So That You Faint And Die. I Want You To Be Amazed By Me, And To Confess To Yourself That You Had Never Even Dreamed Of Such Transports.... When You Are Old, I Want You To Recall Those Few Hours, I Want Your Dry Bones To Quiver With Joy When You Think Of Them.

One Day, I Shall Explode Like An Artillery Shell And All My Bits Will Be Found On The Writing Table.

And So I Will Take Back Up My Poor Life, So Plain And So Tranquil, Where Phrases Are Adventures And The Only Flowers I Gather Aremetaphors.

Emma Was No Asleep, She Was Pretending To Be Asleep; And, While He Was Dozing Off At Her Side, She Lay Awake, Dreaming Other Dreams.

Iced Champagne Was Served, And The Feel Of The Cold Wine In Her Mouth Gave Emma A Shiver That Ran Over Her From Head To Toe.

My God, This Novel Makes Me Break Out In A Cold Sweat! Do You Know How Much I've Written In Five Months, Since The End Of August? Sixty-five Pages! Each Paragraph Is Good In Itself And There Are Some Pages That Are Perfect. I Feel Certain. But Just Because Of This, It Isn't Getting On. It's A Series Of Well-turned, Ordered Paragraphs Which Do Not Flow On From Each Other. I Shall Have To Unscrew Them, Loosen The Joints, As One Does With The Masts Of A Ship When One Wants The Sail To Take More Wind.

I Am Finding It Very Hard To Get My Novel Started. I Suffer From Stylistic Abscesses; And Sentences Keep Itching Without Coming To A Head.

After The Pain Of This Disappointment Her Heart Once More Stood Empty, And The Succession Of Identical Days Began Again.

Only Three Things Are Infinite. The Sky In Its Stars, The Sea In Its Drops Of Water, And The Heart In Its Tears.

Boredom, That Silent Spider, Was Spinning Its Web In The Darkness In Every Corner Of Her Heart.

… Her Heart Remained Empty Once More, And The Procession Of Days All Alike Began Again. So They Were Going To Follow One Another, Like This, In Line, Always Identical, Innumerable, Bringing Nothing!

Casting Aspersions On Those We Love Always Does Something To Loosen Our Ties. We Shouldn't Maltreat Our Idols: The Gilt Comes Off On Our Hands.

We Think Of Women At Every Age: While Still Children, We Fondle With A Naïve Sensuality The Breasts Of Those Grown-up Girls Kissing Us And Cuddling Us In Their Arms; At The Age Of Ten, We Dream Of Love; At Fifteen, Love Comes Along; At Sixty, It Is Still With Us, And If Dead Men In Their Tombs Have Any Thought In Their Heads, It Is How To Make Their Way Underground To The Nearby Grave, Lift The Shroud Of The Dear Departed Women, And Mingle With Her In Her Sleep

He Loved A Book Because It Was A Book; He Loved Its Odor, Its Form, Its Title. What He Loved In A Manuscript Was Its Old Illegible Date, The Bizarre And Strange Gothic Characters, The Heavy Gilding Which Loaded Its Drawings. It Was Its Pages Covered With Dust — Dust Of Which He Breathed The Sweet And Tender Perfume With Delight.

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.

Talent Is Long Patience.

Each Dream Finds At Last Its Form; There Is A Drink For Every Thirst, And Love For Every Heart. And There Is No Better Way To Spend Your Life Than In The Unceasing Preoccupation Of An Idea--of An Ideal.

There Are In Me, In Literary Terms, Two Distinct Characters: One Who Is Taken With Roaring, With Lyricism, With Soaring Aloft, With All The Sonorities Of Phrase And Summits Of Thought; And The Other Who Digs And Scratches For Truth All He Can, Who Is As Interested In The Little Facts As The Big Ones, Who Would Like To Make You Feel Materially The Things He Reproduces.

For Him The Universe Did Not Extend Beyond The Circumference Of Her Petticoat.

Books Aren't Made In The Way That Babies Are: They Are Made Like Pyramids. There's Some Long-pondered Plan, And Then Great Blocks Of Stone Are Placed One On Top Of The Other, And It's Back-breaking, Sweaty, Time Consuming Work. And All To No Purpose! It Just Stands There In The Desert! But It Towers Over It Prodigiously. Jackals Piss At The Base Of It, And Bourgeois Clamber To The Top Of It, Etc. Continue This Comparison.

I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

I Tried To Discover, In The Rumor Of Forests And Waves, Words That Other Men Could Not Hear, And I Pricked Up My Ears To Listen To The Revelation Of Their Harmony.

Of All Lies, Art Is The Least Untrue.

What An Elder Sees Sitting; The Young Can't See Standing.

I Am An Obscure And Patient Pearl-fisherman Who Dives Into The Deepest Waters And Comes Up With Empty Hands And A Blue Face. Some Fatal Attraction Draws Me Down Into The Abysses Of Thought, Down Into Those Innermost Recesses Which Never Cease To Fascinate The Strong. I Shall Spend My Life Gazing At The Ocean Of Art, Where Others Voyage Or Fight; And From Time To Time I’ll Entertain Myself By Diving For Those Green And Yellow Shells That Nobody Will Want. So I Shall Keep Them For Myself And Cover The Walls Of My Hut With Them.

You Need A High Degree Of Corruption Or A Very Big Heart To Love Absolutely Everything

You Don't Know What It Is To Stay A Whole Day With Your Head In Your Hands Trying To Squeeze Your Unfortunate Brain So As To Find A Word.

To See One's Name In Print! Some People Commit A Crime For No Other Reason.

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

She Was As Sated With Him As He Was Tired Of Her. Emma Had Rediscovered In Adultery All The Banality Of Marriage.

Since You Are Now Studying Geometry And Trigonometry, I Will Give You A Problem. A Ship Sails The Ocean. It Left Boston With A Cargo Of Wool. It Grosses 200 Tons. It Is Bound For Le Havre. The Mainmast Is Broken, The Cabin Boy Is On Deck, There Are 12 Passengers Aboard, The Wind Is Blowing East-north-east, The Clock Points To A Quarter Past Three In The Afternoon. It Is The Month Of May. How Old Is The Captain?

In Her Enthusiasms She Had Always Looked For Something Tangible: She Had Always Loved Church For Its Flowers, Music For Its Romantic Words, Literature For Its Power To Stir The Passions And She Rebelled Before The Mysteries Of Faith Just As She Grew Ever More Restive Under Discipline, Which Was Antipathetic To Her Nature.

Snicker On Hearing His Name: 'the Gentleman Who Thinks We Are Descended From The Apes.'

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.

Talent Is A Long Patience.

Let Us Not Kid Ourselves; Let Us Remember That Literature Is Of No Use Whatever, Except In The Very Special Case Of Somebody's Wishing To Become, Of All Things, A Professor Of Literature.

Everything One Invents Is True, You May Be Perfectly Sure Of That. Poetry Is As Precise As Geometry.

The Rage For Wanting To Conclude Is One Of The Most Deadly And Most Fruitless Manias To Befall Humanity. Each Religion And Each Philosophy Has Pretended To Have God To Itself, To Measure The Infinite, And To Know The Recipe For Happiness. What Arrogance And What Nonsense! I See, To The Contrary, That The Greatest Geniuses And The Greatest Works Have Never Concluded.

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

But An Infinity Of Passions Can Be Contained In A Minute, Like A Crowd In A Tiny Space.

Writing History Is Like Drinking An Ocean And Pissing A Cupful.

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.

I Like Prostitution. My Heart Has Never Failed To Pound At The Sight Of One Of Those Provocatively Dressed Women Walking In The Rain Under The Gaslamps, Just As The Sight Of Monks In Their Robes And Girdles Touches Some Ascetic, Hidden Corner Of My Soul.

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

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.

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?

It Is An Excellent Habit To Look At Things As So Many Symbols.

(egypt) Is A Great Place For Contrasts: Splendid Things Gleam In The Dust.

Happiness Is A Monstrosity! Punished Are Those Who Seek It.

Before Her Marriage She Had Thought That She Had Love Within Her Grasp; But Since The Happiness Which She Had Expected This Love To Bring Her Hadn’t Come, She Supposed She Must Have Been Mistaken. And Emma Tried To Imagine Just What Was Meant, In Life, By The Words “bliss,” “passion,” And “rapture” - Words That Had Seemed So Beautiful To Her In Books.

One's Duty Is To Feel What Is Great, Cherish The Beautiful, And To Not Accept The Conventions Of Society With The Ignominy That It Imposes Upon Us.

One Must Always Hope When One Is Desperate, And Doubt When One Hopes.

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

Here Is True Immorality: Ignorance And Stupidity; The Devil Is Nothing But This. His Name Is Legion.

If You Participate In Life, You Don’t See It Clearly: You Suffer From It Too Much Or Enjoy It Too Much. The Artist, To My Way Of Thinking, Is A Monstrosity, Something Outside Nature. All The Misfortunes Providence Inflicts On Him Come From His Stubborness In Denying That Maxim.

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

The Deplorable Mania Of Doubt Exhausts Me. I Doubt About Everything, Even My Doubts.

There Are Two Infinities That Confuse Me: The One In My Soul Devours Me; The One Around Me Will Crush Me

The Author, In His Work, Must Be Like God In The Universe, Present Everywhere And Visible Nowhere.

Fiction Writers

It Is Splendid To Be A Great Writer, To Put Men Into The Frying Pan Of Your Words And Make Them Pop Like Chestnuts.

The True Poet For Me Is A Priest. As Soon As He Dons The Cassock, He Must Leave His Family.

We Should Not Touch Our Idols: Their Gilding Will Remain On Our Hands.

My Life Which I Dream Will Be So Beautiful, So Poetic, So Vast, So Filled With Love Will Turn Out To Be Like Everybody Else's - Monotonous, Sensible, Stupid.

Style Is As Much Under The Words As In The Words. It Is As Much The Soul As It Is The Flesh Of A Work.

Travel Makes One Modest. You See What A Tiny Place You Occupy In The World.

There Are Three Thing In The World I Love Most: The Sea, Hamlet, And Don Giovanni.

On Spinach: I Dislike It, And Am Happy To Dislike It Because If I Liked It I Would Eat It, And I Cannot Stand It.

There Are Some Men Whose Only Mission Among Others Is To Act As Intermediaries; One Crosses Them Like Bridges And Keeps Going.

Our Ignorance Of History Causes Us To Slander Our Own Times.

[the Artist] Is Like A Pump; He Has Inside Him A Great Pipe That Reaches Down Into The Entrails Of Things, The Deepest Layers. He Sucks Up What Was Lying There Below, Dim And Unnoticed, And Brings It In Great Jets To The Sunlight.

You Must Write For Yourself, Above All. That Is Your Only Hope Of Creating Something Beautiful.

Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

The Faster The Word Sticks To The Thought, The More Beautiful Is The Effect.

She Was The Amoureuse Of All The Novels, The Heroine Of All The Plays, The Vague “she” Of All The Poetry Books.

I Am Alone On This Road Strewn With Bones And Bordered By Ruins! Angels Have Their Brothers, And Demons Have Their Infernal Companions. Yet I Have But The Sound Of My Scythe When It Harvests, My Whistling Arrows, My Galloping Horse. Always The Sound Of The Same Wave Eating Away At The World

Once One Has Kissed A Cadaver's Forehead, There Always Remains Something Of It On The Lips, An Infinite Bitterness, An Aftertasteof Nothingness That Nothing Can Erase.

She Wanted To Die, But She Also Wanted To Live In Paris.

Stupidity Is An Immovable Object: You Can't Try To Attack It Wiithout Being Broken By It.

He Had The Vanity To Believe Men Did Not Like Him – While Men Simply Did Not Know Him.

How We Keep These Dead Souls In Our Hearts. Each One Of Us Carries Within Himself His Necropolis.

What I Would Like To Write Is A Book About Nothing, A Book Without Exterior Attachments, Which Would Be Held Together By The Innerforce Of Its Style, As The Earth Without Support Is Held In The Air--a Book That Would Have Almost No Subject Or At Least In Which The Subject Would Be Almost Invisible.

One Must Laugh And Weep, Love, Work, Enjoy And Suffer, In Short Vibrate As Much As Possible In All His Being.

The Most Important Thing In The World Is To Hold Your Soul Aloft.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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.

Antiquite . En Tout Ce Qui S'y Rapporte: Est Poncif, Embe" Tant! Etc. Antiquity. And Everything To Do With It, Cliche D And Boring.

The Artist Must Be In His Work As God Is In Creation, Invisible And All-powerful; One Must Sense Him Everywhere But Never See Him.

It Is A Delicious Thing To Write, To Be No Longer Yourself But To Move In An Entire Universe Of Your Own Creating. Today, For Instance, As Man And Woman, Both Lover And Mistress, I Rode In A Forest On An Autumn Afternoon Under The Yellow Leaves, And I Was Also The Horses, The Leaves, The Wind, The Words My People Uttered, Even The Red Sun That Made Them Almost Close Their Love-drowned Eyes.

Thought Is The Greatest Of Pleasures —pleasure Itself Is Only Imagination—have You Ever Enjoyed Anything More Than Your Dreams?

I Love My Work With A Frenetic And Perverse Love, As An Ascetic Loves The Hair Shirt Which Scratches His Belly.

Art Is Nothing Without Form.

Everyone, Either From Modesty Or Egotism, Hides Away The Best And Most Delicate Of His Soul’s Possessions; To Gain The Esteem Of Others, We Must Only Ever Show Our Ugliest Sides; This Is How We Keep Ourselves On The Common Level

Ah! In Fact There Are Two Moralities ... The Petty One, The Conventional One, The One Devised By Men, That Keeps Changing And Bellows So Loudly, Making A Commotion Down Here Among Us, In A Perfectly Pedestrian Way ... But The Other One, The Eternal One, Is All Around And Above Us, Like A Landscape That Surrounds Us And The Blue Sky That Gives Us Light.

Madame Aubain's Servant Felicite Was The Envy Of The Ladies Of Pont-l'eveque For Half A Century.

The Only Way To Avoid Being Unhappy Is To Close Yourself Up In Art And To Count For Nothing All The Rest.

We Must Laugh And Cry, Enjoy And Suffer, In A Word, Vibrate To Our Full Capacity … I Think That’s What Being Really Human Means.

Love Is A Springtime Plant That Perfumes Everything With Its Hope, Even The Ruins To Which It Clings.

Farming -- A Vocation Accursed Of Heaven, Since One Never Saw A Millionaire Involved In It.

Writing Is A Dog's Life, But The Only Life Worth Living.

After A Person Dies, There Is Always Something Like A Feeling Of Stupefaction, So Difficult Is It To Comprehend This Unexpected Advent Of Nothingness And To Resign Oneself To Believing It.

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

The Most Important Quality Of Art And Its Aim Is Illusion; Emotion, Which Is Often Obtained By Certain Sacrifices Of Poetic Detail, Is Something Else Entirely And Of An Inferior Order.

The Great Natures Which Are Good, Are Above Everything Generous And Don't Begrudge The Giving Of Themselves.

What An Awful Thing Life Is, Isn’t It? It’s Like Soup With Lots Of Hairs Floating On The Surface. You Have To Eat It Nevertheless.

Come, Let’s Be Calm: No One Incapable Of Restraint Was Ever A Writer.

It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.

Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.

Nothing Is More Humiliating Than To See Idiots Succeed In Enterprises We Have Failed In.

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.

[t]he Truth Is That Fullness Of Soul Can Sometimes Overflow In Utter Vapidity Of Language, For None Of Us Can Ever Express The Exact Measure Of His Needs Or His Thoughts Or His Sorrows; And 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.

I Believe That If One Always Looked At The Skies, One Would End Up With Wings.

She Did Not Believe That Things Could Remain The Same In Different Places, And Since The Portion Of Her Life That Lay Behind Her Had Been Bad, No Doubt That Which Remained To Be Lived Would Be Better.

Art Requires Neither Complaisance Nor Politeness; Nothing But Faith, Faith And Freedom.

One's Existence Should Be In Two Parts: One Should Live Like A Bourgeois And Think Like A Demigod.

Coffee: Induces Wit. Good Only If It Comes Through Havre. After A Big Dinner Party It Is Taken Standing Up. Take It Without Sugar - Very Swank: Gives The Impression You Have Lived In The East.

Speech Is A Rolling Press That Always Amplifies One's Emotions.

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

The Heart, Like The Stomach, Wants A Varied Diet.

The Style, Which Is Something I Take To Heart, Is Getting On My Nerves Horribly. It Frustrates And Torments Me. I Have Days When Iam Sick About It And Nights When It Gives Me A Fever. The More I Go At It The More I Find Myself Incapable Of Conveying The Idea.

A Good Sentence In Prose Should Be Like A Good Line In Poetry, Unchangeable, As Rhythmic, As Sonorous.

The Hearts Of Women Are Like Those Little Pieces Of Furniture With Secret Hiding - Places, Full Of Drawers Fitted Into Each Other; You Go A Lot Of Trouble, Break Your Nails, And In The Bottom Find Some Withered Flower, A Few Grains Of Dust - Or Emptiness!

When You Reduce A Woman To Writing, She Makes You Think Of A Thousand Other Women

And The More He Was Irritated By Her Basic Personality, The More He Was Drawn To Her By A Harsh, Bestial Sensuality, Illusions Of A Moment, Which Ended In Hate.

A Superhuman Will Is Needed In Order To Write, And I Am Only A Man.

We Swung Between Madness And Suicide ... It Was Beautiful!

One Never Tires Of What Is Well Written, Style Is Life! It Is The Very Blood Of Thought!

Stupidity Is Something Unshakable; Nothing Attacks It Without Breaking Itself Against It; It Is Of The Nature Of Granite, Hard And Resistant.

Love, To Her, Was Something Hat Comes Suddenly, Like A Blinding Flash Of Lightening - A Heaven-sent Storm Hurled Into Life, Uprooting It, Sweeping Every Will Before It Like A Leaf, Engulfing All Feelings.

The Finest Works Of Art Are Those In Which There Is The Least Matter. The Closer Expression Comes To Thought, The More The Word Clings To The Idea And Disappears, The More Beautiful The Work Of Art.

Be Orderly And Disciplined In Daily Life, Like A Good Bourgeois, So That I Might Be Wild And Violent In My Art.

I Go From Exasperation To A State Of Collapse, Then I Recover And Go From Prostration To Fury, So That My Average State Is One Of Being Annoyed.

Through Small Apertures We Glimpse Abysses Whose Sombre Depths Turn Us Faint. And Yet Over The Whole There Hovers An Extraordinary Tenderness.

There Was An Air Of Indifference About Them, A Calm Produced By The Gratification Of Every Passion; And Through Their Manners Were Suave, One Could Sense Beneath Them That Special Brutality Which Comes From The Habit Of Breaking Down Half-hearted Resistances That Keep One Fit And Tickle One’s Vanity—the Handling Of Blooded Horses, The Pursuit Of Loose Women.

I Am A Man-pen. I Feel Through The Pen, Because Of The Pen.

A Thing Derided Is A Thing Dead; A Laughing Man Is Stronger Than A Suffering Man.

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Charles Sanders Peirce

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