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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.

-Gustave Flaubert

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What Stops Me From

Gustave Flaubert

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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.

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

Judge The Goodness Of A Book By The Energy Of The Punches It Has Given You. I Believe The Greatest Characteristic Of Genius, Is, Above All, Force.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Everyone Became Brave From Excess Of Terror.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The More You Approach Infinity, The Deeper You Penetrate Terror

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Knew All The Dreams I've Dreamed!

You Don’t Make Art Out Of Good Intentions.

Good Intentions

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

There Is No Truth. There Is Only Perception.

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

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

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

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

I Have Dreamed Much And Have Done Very Little.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Morality Of Art Is In Its Very Beauty.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

[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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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!

Exuberance Is Better Than Taste.

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.

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

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

Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Pleasure Is Found First In Anticipation, Later In Memory.

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 Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

You Can't Find The Soul With A Scalpel.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Success Is A Consequence And Must Not Be A Goal.

Congratulations

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Talent Is A Long Patience.

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.

To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.

God Is Only A Word Dreamed Up To Explain The World

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 Look At The Abyss, Because There Is At The Bottom An Inexpressible Charm Which Attracts Us.

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

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

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

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

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.

Anything Becomes Interesting If You Look At It Long Enough.

Cold. Healthier Than Heat.

Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.

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

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.

Beautiful Things Spoil Nothing.

Beautiful Things

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Talent Is Nothing But Long Patience.

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

… Her Heart Remained Empty Once More, And The Procession Of Days All Alike Began Again. So They Were Going To Follow One Another, Like This, In Line, Always Identical, Innumerable, Bringing Nothing!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Read In Order To Live.

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

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

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

[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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Robert Conquest

Aretha Franklin

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