Top 71 Quotes by 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.

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.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

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

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

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

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.