Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.

Quotes

Perfection is the enemy of the good.
Language is like a crack'd kettle on which we beat out tunes to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
Language is like a crack'd kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars.
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
That man has missed something who has never left a brothel at sunrise feeling like throwing himself into the river out of pure disgust.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Happiness, Selfishness, Stupidity
A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.
A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no! Let my flesh perish with me, and let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

Democracy
...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fulness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.
For none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

Art
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Writing