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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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The Rage For Wanting

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

Beautiful Things Spoil Nothing.

Beautiful Things

The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.

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.

Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Sooner Or Later

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

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

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

Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

[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.

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.

By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

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.

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

Art Is Nothing Without Form.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Of All Lies, Art Is The Least Untrue.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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.

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.

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

My Foregrounds Are Imaginary, My Backgrounds Real.

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.

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

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.

The More Humanity Advances, The More It Is Degraded.

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.

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.

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

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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.

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.

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

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

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

Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.

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

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.

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

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

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!

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

Reveal Art; Conceal The Artist.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Speech Is A Rolling Press That Always Amplifies One's Emotions.

Talent Is Long Patience.

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

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.

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

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