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.
Gustave Flaubert

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Gustave Flaubert

I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Gustave Flaubert

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
Gustave Flaubert

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
Gustave Flaubert

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.
Gustave Flaubert

Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
Gustave Flaubert

Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Gustave Flaubert

Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary is myself.
Gustave Flaubert

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Gustave Flaubert

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.
Gustave Flaubert

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.
Gustave Flaubert

One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
Gustave Flaubert

One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
Gustave Flaubert

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
Gustave Flaubert

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
Gustave Flaubert

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
Gustave Flaubert