Gustave Flaubert Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Wise

  Gustave Flaubert (1951). “Letters”
• 

  Read in order to live.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Reading, Order

  Gustave Flaubert (1951). “Letters”

• What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...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?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Wind, Ideas

• The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Literature, Way

• 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.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Believe, Book, Judging

• Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Food, Book, Home

• She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Play, Heroines

  Gustave Flaubert (1993). “Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life”, Everyman's Library

• He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sweet, Book, Character

• What seems beautiful to me, what I should like to write, is a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the strength of its style, just as the earth, suspended in the void, depends on nothing external for its support.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Beautiful, Book, Writing

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.154, Harvard University Press

• And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Wind, Lamps

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert (Illustrated)”, p.147, Delphi Classics

• Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Beautiful, Book, Passion

  Gustave Flaubert (1957). “Madame Bovary”

• Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Forests, Sentences

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.215, Harvard University Press

• What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce 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.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Book, Writing

• They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Advice, Opinion

  Gustave Flaubert (1976). “Bouvard and Pécuchet”, Penguin Books

• Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Writing, Men

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmüller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, Belknap Press

• Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, People, Sensual

  Gustave Flaubert (1967). “Intimate notebook, 1840-1841”

• 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, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands there in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Baby, Block, Book

• Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Envy, Half

  Willa Cather, Gustave Flaubert (2007). “Rites of Compassion”, Feminist Press

• The citadel of Machaerus rose east of the Dead Sea on a basalt Peak shaped like a cone, girdled by four deep valleys; two about its sides, one in front, and the fourth behind.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Sea, Two

  Gustave Flaubert, Arthur Sydney McDowall (2004). “Three Tales”, p.62, Courier Corporation

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