Madame Bovary

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Gustave Flaubert QUOTATION: It is the fault of fate.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Charles, in Madame Bovary (1856).

QUOTATION: I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 31, 1852, to Louise Colet (1926).

QUOTATION: 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 are metaphors.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 14, 1857, to Elisa Schlesinger (1926).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 16, 1852, to Louise Colet (1926).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 16, 1852, to Louise Colet.

QUOTATION: What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the inner force 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 16, 1852, to Louise Colet (1926).

QUOTATION: I will write, as in the past, simply for the pleasure of writing, for myself alone, with no thought of money or fame. Apollo at least will be grateful to me, and perhaps at last I will produce something beautiful—for all things make way before the unceasing striving of an energetic sentiment.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, vol. 1, letter, Jan. 14, 1857, to Elisa Schlesinger (1926).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, vol. 1, letter, Jan. 14, 1857, to Elisa Schlesinger (1926).

QUOTATION: 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.
ATTRIBUTION: Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), French novelist. Correspondance, letter, Jan. 16, 1852, to Louise Colet (1926).