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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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I Am An Obscure

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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

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

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The Future Is The Worst Thing About The Present.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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

… 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!

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.

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

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

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.

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

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

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.

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

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

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

Talent Is A Long Patience.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

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.

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.

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

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

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

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

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.

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

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

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

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Congratulations

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

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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.

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

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Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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Talent Is Long Patience.

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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.

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.

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Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

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

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

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

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

Everything Is There: The Love Of Art.

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.

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

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.

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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.

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.

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

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

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

Madame Bovary Is Myself.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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

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

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

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.

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

May I Die Like A Dog Rather Than Hasten The Ripening Of A Sentence By A Single Second!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.

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

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.

Read In Order To Live.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

[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.

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

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.

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.

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!

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

Prose Is Like Hair; It Shines With Combing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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

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