# Gustave Flaubert's most famous quotes

"Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions", human speech "like a cracked kettle" and "Read in order to live": Gustave Flaubert's most quoted lines, from Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education to his letters, with their source.

- 57 votes · 13 items
- Oct 19, 2021 · gameuse_lille
- https://even.best/en/l/5163/gustave-flaubert-s-most-famous-quotes

## Top 13

1. **One must not touch idols: the gilt comes off on your hands.** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — Madame Bovary (1857), IIIe partie, chap. 6.
2. **What an admirable invention of the Devil social relations are!** (6 · ▲6 ▼0) — Letter to Louise Colet, 22 July 1852.
3. **Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to move the stars to pity.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Madame Bovary (1857), IIe partie, chap. 12.
4. **He knew the melancholy of steamships, cold awakenings in tents, the giddiness of landscapes and ruins, the bitterness of interrupted friendships.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — Sentimental Education (1869).
5. **"Heroes don't smell nice!"** (4 · ▲5 ▼1) — Sentimental Education (1869).
6. **Out of sheer terror, everyone became brave.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — Salammbô (1862).
7. **Stupidity consists in wanting to reach conclusions.** (2 · ▲3 ▼1) — Letter to Louis Bouilhet, 4 September 1850.
8. **Read in order to live.** (1 · ▲3 ▼2) — Letter to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie, June 1857.
9. **But are you sure you see? Are you even sure you are alive? Perhaps there is nothing!** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1874).
10. **The awareness of being worth more than these men eased the weariness of looking at them.** (0 · ▲1 ▼1) — Sentimental Education (1869).
11. **To be stupid, selfish and in good health: those are the three requirements for happiness.** (-1 · ▲2 ▼3) — Letter to Louise Colet, 13 August 1846.
12. **It was at Megara, a suburb of Carthage, in the gardens of Hamilcar.** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — Salammbô (opening line) (1862).
13. **His name was Loulou. His body was green, the tips of his wings pink, his forehead blue and his throat golden.** (-1 · ▲1 ▼2) — "A Simple Heart", Three Tales (1877).

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