Gustave Flaubert: Citations en anglais (Page 2)

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.”

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

“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.”

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”

“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.”

“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”

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”

“You don’t make art out of good intentions.”

“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.”

“There is no truth. There is only perception.”

“There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me”

“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.”

“I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.”

“You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.”

“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.”

“The public wants work which flatters its illusions.”

“He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.”