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?

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert

Related Quotes

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?

— Gustave Flaubert

You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.

— Gustave Flaubert

booksliteraturereading

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.

— Gustave Flaubert

AboveBelieveBook

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

— Gustave Flaubert

on-writingself-expression

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