A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.
All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms.
All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed.
At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
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.
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.
Continuing her harangue, she declared that the knowledge that this man still existed poisoned her very life.
Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them.
Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
Exuberance is better than taste.
Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor.
Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.
How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.
Human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.
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.
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.
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.
I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.
In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo reverberating under the lofty vault.
In this way, she learned her catechism, her religious education having been neglected in her youth; and thenceforth she imitated all Virginia's religious practices, fasted when she did, and went to confession with her.
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
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.
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.
Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her.
Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
Madame Bovary is myself.
My poor Bovary suffers and cries in more than a score of villages in France at this very moment.
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
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.
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.
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house.
Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.
Read much, but not many books.
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
She devoured, without skipping a work, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop.
She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more.
She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was dead.
She found it hard, however, to think of the latter as a person, for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath?
She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.
She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen.
She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o'clock the vomiting began again.
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
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.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
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.
The artist must be in his work like God in his Creation, invisible and all-powerful, so that he is felt everywhere but not seen.
The author in his book must be like God in his universe, everywhere present and nowhere visible.
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps.
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
The clergy appeared in the yard. Mother Simon climbed on a chair to reach the bull's-eye, and in this manner could see the altar.
The crests of the hill-tops in the valley below the palace were just discernible in the light of the false dawn, although their bases, extending to the abyss, were still plunged in darkness.
The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
The love she sought to rekindle had died long ago. He thought instead of all his misfortunes, and of the twelve long years during which the war had continued.
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
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.
The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Then he said that Messiah was the name to be given to one who was to come, bringing the enjoyment of all blessings, and giving them domination over all the peoples of the earth.
Then the three, taking with them the head of John the Baptist, set out upon the road to Galilee; and as the burden was heavy, each man bore it awhile in turn.
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.
There is no truth. There is only perception.
These aspects of nature, which seemed to his troubled fancy signs of the wrath of the gods, terrified him, and he leaned heavily against the balcony railing, his eyes fixed, his head resting upon his hands.
They acquire a faculty deserving of pity, they recognize stupidity and can no longer tolerate it. Through their inquisitiveness their understanding grows; having had more ideas, they suffered more.
To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.
What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.
What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward.
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
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.
Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue.
Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.
French novelist.
Was the best friend of Ivan Turgenev
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