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[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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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[the Artist] Is Like

Gustave Flaubert

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[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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.'

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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

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

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

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

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

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

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

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 Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Of All Lies, Art Is The Least Untrue.

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

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

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.

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

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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

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.

Beautiful Things Spoil Nothing.

Beautiful Things

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

He Loved A Book Because It Was A Book; He Loved Its Odor, Its Form, Its Title. What He Loved In A Manuscript Was Its Old Illegible Date, The Bizarre And Strange Gothic Characters, The Heavy Gilding Which Loaded Its Drawings. It Was Its Pages Covered With Dust — Dust Of Which He Breathed The Sweet And Tender Perfume With Delight.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Read In Order To Live.

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

You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

[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.

Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

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

[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.

What Is The Beautiful, If Not The Impossible.

Possible And Impossible

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

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

Art Is Nothing Without Form.

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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

Sooner Or Later

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.

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.

Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.

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

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

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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