Quotations From GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

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• 51.

  I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Pensées de Gustave Flaubert, p. 1, Conard (1915).
• 52.

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

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by Francis Steegmuller. The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert, letter, 1848, to Louise Colet (Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953).
  
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• 53.

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

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by Francis Steegmuller. The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert, letter, October 2, 1856, to Léon Laurent-Pichat (Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953).
  
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• 54.

  It is a delicious thing to write, whether well or badly M to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by Francis Steegmuller. The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert, letter, December 23, 1853, to Louise Colet (Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953).
• 55.

  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.

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by Francis Steegmuller. The Selected Letters of Gustave Flaubert, letter, August 6, 1846, to Louise Colet (Farrar, Strauss and Young, 1953).
  
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• 56.

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

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Pensées de Gustave Flaubert, p. 47, Conard (1915).
  
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• 57.

  The future is the worst thing about the present.

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Pensées de Gustave Flaubert, p. 1, Conard (1915).
  
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• 58.

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

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Pensées de Gustave Flaubert, p. 84, Conard (1915).
• 59.

  One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

  Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), French novelist. Trans. by William G. Allen. Pensées de Gustave Flaubert, p. 2, Conard (1915).