Gustave Flaubert Book Quotations

Read in order to live.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.