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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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Melancholy Is A Sensual

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

[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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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

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.

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.

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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

Fiction Writers

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

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.

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

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

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

The Future Is The Worst Thing About The Present.

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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

The Principal Thing In The World Is To Keep The Soul Aloft.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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?

Prose Is Like Hair; It Shines With Combing.

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

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 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.

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

What Better Occupation, Really, Than To Spend The Evening At The Fireside With A Book, With The Wind Beating On The Windows And The Lamp Burning Bright...haven't You Ever Happened To Come Across In A Book Some Vague Notion That You've Had, Some Obscure Idea That Returns From Afar And That Seems To Express Completely Your Most Subtle Feelings?

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.

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.

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.

Art Is Nothing Without Form.

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

Read In Order To Live.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Talent Is Long Patience.

Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

What Is Beautiful Is Moral, That Is All There Is To It.

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

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

Cold. Healthier Than Heat.

I Hate That Which We Have Decided To Call Realism, Even Though I Have Been Made One Of Its High Priests.

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

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

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.

It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.

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.

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

Having Patience

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

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

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

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

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

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 Heart, Like The Stomach, Wants A Varied Diet.

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.

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.

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.

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

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

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

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

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.

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Go Dreaming Into The Future, Where I See Nothing, Nothing. I Have No Plans, No Idea, No Project, And, What Is Worse, No Ambition. Something – The Eternal ‘what’s The Use?’ – Sets Its Bronze Barrier Across Every Avenue That I Open Up In The Realm Of Hypothesis.

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

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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

Anything Becomes Interesting If You 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.

Do Not Imagine You Can Exorcise What Oppresses You In Life By Giving Vent To It In Art.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The More Humanity Advances, The More It Is Degraded.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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