What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.

- Gustave Flaubert

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.

- Gustave Flaubert

Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.

- Gustave Flaubert

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

- Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.

- Gustave Flaubert

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

There is no truth. There is only perception.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

- Gustave Flaubert

Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.

- Gustave Flaubert

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.

- Gustave Flaubert

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

- Gustave Flaubert