Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex…

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)

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.

. . . human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

Non leggete, come fanno i bambini, per divertirvi, o, come fanno gli ambiziosi per istruirvi. No, leggete per vivere.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

In his earliest youth, he had drawn inspiration from really bad authors, as you may have seen from his style; as he grew older, he lost his taste for them, but the excellent authors just...

People believe a little too easily that the function of the sun is to help the cabbages along.

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.

A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.

Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless

A memory is a beautiful thing, it’s almost a desire that you miss.

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.

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.

Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody’s wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.

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?

She (Madame Bovary) had that indefinable beauty that comes from happiness, enthusiasm, success – a beauty that is nothing more or less than a harmony of temperament and circumstances

The artist ought no more to appear in his work than God in nature.

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

Pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave...

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,...

No, read in order to live.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?

There is no truth. There is only perception.

What is beautiful is moral; that is all there is to it.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.

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

The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.

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...

Travel, leave everything, copy the birds. The home is one of civilization’s sadnesses.

In March 1853 she was afflicted with a pain in the chest; her tongue seemed to be covered with a film; leeches failed to make her breathing any easier.

The author in his book must be like God in his universe, everywhere present and nowhere visible.

A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.

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...

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...

To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set...

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.

Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

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

I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it’s of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don’t need...

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.

Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with...

Comme l’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq à six livres. ( How wise one might be if one knew thoroughly only some half of a dozen books

His eagerness had turned into a routine; he embraced her at the same time every day. It was a habit like any other, a favourite pudding after the monotony of dinner.