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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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He Loved A Book

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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What Seems Beautiful To Me, What I Should Like To Write, Is A Book About Nothing, A Book Dependent On Nothing External, Which Would Be Held Together By The Strength Of Its Style, Just As The Earth, Suspended In The Void, Depends On Nothing External For Its Support.

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.

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.

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

Everything Which One Invents Is True, Be Sure Of It.

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.

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

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.

I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Talent Is A Long Patience.

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

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

Talent Is Long Patience.

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

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.

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

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

Anything Becomes Interesting If You Look At It Long Enough.

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.

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.

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

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

By Working One Can Bend Fortune. She Is Fond Of Crafty Men.

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

There Comes A Point At Which You Stop Writing And Think All The More

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

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

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.

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

Success As I See It Is A Result, Not A Goal.

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

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.

Read In Order To Live.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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.

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

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.

What Seems To Me The Highest And The Most Difficult Achievement Of Art Is Not To Make Us Laugh Or Cry, Or To Rouse Our Lust Or Our Anger, But To Do As Nature Does-that Is, Fill Us With Wonderment.

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!

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

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.

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

Writing This Book I Am Like A Man Playing The Piano With Lead Balls Attached To His Knuckles.

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

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

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

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

What Is Glory? It Is To Have A Lot Of Nonsense Talked About You.

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

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

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.

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.

On Certain Occasions Art Can Shake Very Ordinary Spirits, And Whole Worlds Can Be Revealed By Its Clumsiest Interpreters.

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.

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

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

All You Have To Do To Make Something Interesting Is To Look At It Long Enough.

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.

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

One Mustn't Look At The Abyss, Because There Is At The Bottom An Inexpressible Charm Which Attracts Us.

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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

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

Madame Bovary Is Myself.

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.

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

[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.

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

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

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

I Have Patience In All Things - As Far As The Antechamber.

Having Patience

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

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

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

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

Je Suis Autant Chinois Que Fran C° Ais. I Am As Much Chinese As French.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

L'ide E Seule Est E Ternelle Et Ne Cessaire. The Idea Alone Is Eternal And Necessary.

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

Sooner Or Later

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

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

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.

You Can Calculate The Worth Of A Man By The Number Of His Enemies, And The Importance Of A Work Of Art By The Harm That Is Spoken Of It.

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.

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.

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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

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 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.

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

Prose Is Like Hair; It Shines With Combing.

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

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.

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

A Rich Woman Seems To Have All Her Banknotes About Her, Guarding Her Virtue, Like A Cuirass, In The Lining Of Her Corset.

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

I Don't Believe That Happiness Is Possible, But I Think Tranquility Is.

And Indeed, What Is Better Than To Sit By One's Fireside In The Evening With A Book, While The Wind Beats Against The Window And The Lamp Is Buring?

The Future Is The Worst Thing About The Present.

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.

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

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.

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.

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.

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.

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

You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

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

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.

How You Measure The Performance Of Your Managers Directly Affects The Way They Act.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fiction Writers

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.

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.

But, In Her Life, Nothing Was Going To Happen. Such Was The Will Of God! The Future Was A Dark Corridor, And At The Far End The Door Was Bolted.

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

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

Our Ignorance Of History Causes Us To Slander Our Own Times. The Ordinary Person Today Lives Better Than A King Did A Century Ago But Is Ungrateful!

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

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

The Better A Work Is, The More It Attracts Criticism; It Is Like The Fleas Who Rush To Jump On White Linens.

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.

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

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

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

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.

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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.

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.

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.

The Cult Of Art Gives Pride; One Never Has Too Much Of It.

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

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

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.

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

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

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.

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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