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[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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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[t]he Truth Is That

Gustave Flaubert

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[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.

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Madame Bovary Is Myself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Cold. Healthier Than Heat.

Art Is Nothing Without Form.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

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.

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

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!

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

[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.

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.

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Talent Is Long Patience.

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.

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

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.

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.

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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?

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.

Everything Is There: The Love Of Art.

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.

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.

Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

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.

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

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

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Fiction Writers

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Anything Becomes Interesting If You Look At It Long Enough.

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

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

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

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.

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

What A Heavy Oar The Pen Is, And What A Strong Current Ideas Are To Row In!

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

Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

She 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

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

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.

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

Prose Is Like Hair; It Shines With Combing.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

[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.

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

… 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!

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.

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.

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

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

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

Of All Lies, Art Is The Least Untrue.

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.

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

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

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

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

The More Humanity Advances, The More It Is Degraded.

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 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.

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

Having Patience

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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Christine Lahti

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