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.
"Gustave Flaubert" was an influential French writer who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism of his country. He is known especially for his debut novel/first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant/Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.
If you enjoy these quotes, be sure to check out other famous novelists! More Gustave Flaubert on Wikipedia.Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
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.
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
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.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.
A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
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.
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work.
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.
Perfection is the enemy of the good.
The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
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.
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
Human speech is a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.
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