Gustave Flaubert
Overview
Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists
Western literature
Western literature refers to the literature written in the languages of Europe, including the ones belonging to the Indo-European language family as well as several geographically or historically related languages such as Basque, Hungarian, and so forth...

. He is known especially for his first published novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

, Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

(1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

, Seine-Maritime
Seine-Maritime
Seine-Maritime is a French department in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France. It is situated on the northern coast of France, at the mouth of the Seine, and includes the cities of Rouen and Le Havre...

, in the Haute-Normandie
Haute-Normandie
Upper Normandy is one of the 27 regions of France. It was created in 1984 from two départements: Seine-Maritime and Eure, when Normandy was divided into Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy. This division continues to provoke controversy, and some continue to call for reuniting the two regions...

 region of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. He was the second son of Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), a surgeon, and Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot) (1793–1872).
Quotations

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (August 13, 1846)

Quelle atroce invention que celle du bourgeois, n'est-ce pas?

What a horrible invention, the bourgeois, don't you think?

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (October 22, 1846)

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (December 9, 1852)

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (December 11, 1852)

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.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (June 14, 1853)

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Letter to Madame Louise Colet (August 14, 1853)

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.

Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie (March 18, 1857)

Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.

Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie (June 1857)

Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom.

Letter to George Sand (10 May 1867)

 
x
OK