“Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.”
Other Gustave Flaubert Quotes
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert 
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But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands.
Gustave Flaubert
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The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Gustave Flaubert
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Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.
Gustave Flaubert
58% of people like this quote