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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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Didn't Love, Like A

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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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.

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!

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.

They Took Each Other's Advice, Opened One Book, Went Over To Another, Then Did Not Know What To Decide When Opinions Diverged So Widely.

I Love Good Sense Above All, Perhaps Because I Have None.

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.

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

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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

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

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

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.

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

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

There Are Neither Good Nor Bad Subjects. From The Point Of View Of Pure Art, You Could Almost Establish It As An Axiom That The Subject Is Irrelevant, Style Itself Being An Absolute Manner Of Seeing Things.

He Dreamed Of Funeral Love, But Dreams Crumble And The Tomb Abides

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

[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.

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

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

He Loved The Extensive Vaults Where You Could Hear The Night Birds And The Sea Breeze; He Loved The Craggy Ruins Bound Together By Ivy, Those Dark Halls, And Any Appearance Of Death And Destruction. Having Fallen So Far From So High A Position, He Loved Anything That Had Also Fallen From A Great Height

Maybe Happiness Too Is A Metaphor Invented On A Day Of Boredom

You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

Talent Is A Long Patience.

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

La Parole Humaine Est Comme Un Chaudron Fe" Le O U' Nous Battons Des Me Lodies A' Faire Danser Les Ours, Quand On Voudrait Attendrir Les E Toiles. Human Speech Is Like A Cracked Kettle On Which We Beat Out Tunes For Bears To Dance To, When All The Time We Are Longing To Move The Stars To Pity.

You Forget Everything. The Hours Slip By. You Travel In Your Chair Through Centuries You Seem Seem To See Before You, Your Thoughts Are Caught Up In The Story, Dallying With The Details Or Following The Course Of The Plot, You Enter Into Characters, So That It Seems As If It Were Your Own Heart Beating Beneath Their Costumes.

Forget Everything

Life Is So Horrible That One Can Only Bear It By Avoiding It. And That Can Be Done By Living In The World Of Art.

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

I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

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

Sometimes I Think I'm Liquefying Like An Old Camembert.

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.

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.

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.

One Arrives At Style Only With Atrocious Effort, With Fanatical And Devoted Stubbornness.

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.

One Mustn't Always Believe That Feeling Is Everything. In The Arts, It Is Nothing Without Form.

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.

I Sometimes Feel A Great Ennui, Profound Emptiness, Doubts Which Sneer In My Face In The Midst Of The Most Spontaneous Satisfactions. Well, I Would Not Exchange All That For Anything, Because It Seems To Me, In My Conscience, That I Am Doing My Duty, That I Am Obeying A Superior Fatality, That I Am Following The Good And That I Am In The Right.

I Have No Use For The Kind Of God Who Goes Walking In His Garden With A Stick, Sends His Friends To Live In The Bellies Of Whales, Gives Up The Ghost With A Groan And Then Comes Back To Life Three Days Later!

Anything Becomes Interesting If You Look At It Long Enough.

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

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?

Prose Is Like Hair; It Shines With Combing.

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

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

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

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.

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.

You'll Always Have To Deal With Bastards, Being Lied To, Deceived, Slandered And Ridiculed, But That's To Be Expected And You Must Thank Heaven When You Meet The Exception.

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

Woman Is A Vulgar Animal From Whom Man Has Created An Excessively Beautiful Ideal.

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.

One Mustn't Ask Apple Trees For Oranges, France For Sun, Women For Love, Life For Happiness.

A Friend Who Dies, It's Something Of You Who Dies.

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.

It's A Delicious Thing To Write. To Be No Longer Yourself But To Move In An Entire Universe Of Your Own Creating.

It Seems To Me That I Have Always Existed And That I Possess Memories That Date Back To The Pharaohs.

The Idea Of Bringing Someone Into The World Fills Me With Horror. I Would Curse Myself If I Were A Father. A Son Of Mine! Oh No, No, No! May My Entire Flesh Perish And May I Transmit To No One The Aggravations And The Disgrace Of Existence.

What Baffled Him Was That There Should Be All This Fuss About Something So Simple As Love.

Beautiful Things Spoil Nothing.

Beautiful Things

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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

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.

Isn’t ‘not To Be Bored’ One Of The Principal Goals Of Life?

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

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

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

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

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.

The Writer Must Wade Into Life As Into The Sea, But Only Up To The Navel.

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

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.

Women Want You To Deceive Them: They Force You To, And If You Resist, They Blame You.

Cold. Healthier Than Heat.

One Can Be The Master Of What One Does, But Never Of What One Feels.

Whatever The Thing You Wish To Say, There Is But One Word To Express It, But One Verb To Give It Movement, But One Adjective To Qualify It; You Must Seek Until You Find This Noun, This Verb, This Adjective.

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.

For Every Bourgeois, In The Heat Of Youth, If Only For A Day, For A Minute, Has Believed Himself Capable Of Immense Passions, Of Heroic Enterprises. The Most Mediocre Libertine Has Dreamed Of Oriental Princesses; Every Rotary Carries About Inside Him The Debris Of A Poet.

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

But The Disparaging Of Those We Love Always Alienates Us From Them To Some Extent. We Must Not Touch Our Idols; The Gilt Comes Off In Our Hands.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Be Regular And Orderly In Your Life, So That You May Be Violent And Original In Your Work.

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.

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.

As Words Have An Effective Power Of Their Own, Curses Reported Against Someone Might Turn Against The Speaker.

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

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.

The Principal Thing In This World Is To Keep One's Soul Aloft.

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

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

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.

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.

Always 'duty.' I Am Sick Of The Word. They Are A Lot Of Old Blockheads In Flannel Vests And Of Old Women With Foot-warmers And Rosaries Who Constantly Drone Into Our Ears 'duty, Duty!' Ah! By Jove! One's Duty Is To Feel What Is Great, Cherish The Beautiful, And Not Accept All The Conventions Of Society With The Ignominy That It Imposes Upon Us.

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

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

It’s Hard To Communicate Anything Exactly And That’s Why Perfect Relationships Between People Are Difficult To Find.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Have Come To Have The Firm Conviction That Vanity Is The Basis Of Everything, And Finally That What One Calls Conscience Is Only Inner Vanity.

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.

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

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

Everything Depends On The Value We Give To Things. We Are The Ones Who Make Morality And Virtue. The Cannibal Who Eats His Neighbor Is As Innocent As The Child Who Sucks His Barley-sugar.

I Know Nothing More Noble Than The Contemplation Of The World.

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

Life Must Be A Constant Education; One Must Learn Everything, From Speaking To Dying.

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 Art Of Writing Is The Art Of Discovering What You Believe.

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

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

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

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

Of All Possible Debauches, Traveling Is The Greatest That I Know; That's The One They Invented When They Got Tired Of All The Others.

Talent Is A Long Patience, And Originality An Effort Of Will And Intense Observation.

A Memory Is A Beautiful Thing, It's Almost A Desire That You Miss.

There Is Not A Particle Of Life Which Does Not Bear Poetry Within It

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

Axiome: La Haine Du Bourgeois Est Le Commencement De La Vertu. Axiom: Hatred Of The Bourgeois Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

The Most Glorious Moments In Your Life Are Not The So-called Days Of Success, But Rather Those Days When Out Of Dejection And Despair You Feel Rise In You A Challenge To Life, And The Promise Of Future Accomplishments.

Congratulations

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

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.

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.

Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Read In Order To Live.

We Have All Been Beaten! Each One Has To Bear His Misfortune! Resign Yourself!

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

Do Not Read, As Children Do, To Amuse Yourself, Or Like The Ambitious, For The Purpose Of Instruction. No, Read In Order To Live.

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

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

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

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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

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.

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.

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

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

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.

Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

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

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

Remembering The Ball Became For Emma A Daily Occupation. Every Time Wednesday Came Round, She Told Herself When She Woke Up: 'ah! One Week Ago...two Weeks Ago...three Weeks Ago, I Was There!' And, Little By Little, In Her Memory, The Faces All Blurred Together; She Forgot The Tunes Of The Quadrilles; No Longer Could She So Clearly Picture The Liveries And The Rooms; Some Details Disappeared, But The Yearning Remained.

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.

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

Madame Bovary Is Myself.

It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.

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.

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

Melancholy Is A Sensual Pleasure That Is Deliberately Provoked. How Many People Shut Themselves Away To Make Themselves Sadder, Or To Weep Beside A Stream, Or Choose A Sentimental Book! We Are Constantly Building And Unbuilding Ourselves.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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