Gustave Flaubert Quotes

A mathematical equation stands forever.

When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached.

Time destroys the speculation of men, but it confirms nature.

Everything has what is innate,everything has what is necessary.

The idea is more important than the object.

Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea.

The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on.

That alone is Real which exists by itself, which reveals itself by itself and which is eternal and unchanging.

This is what writers mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things.

In many ways ideas are more important than people - they are much more permanent.

Once you put a thought into the world, it can be disagreed with, but it can't be unthought.

Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.

Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?

The Tao which you know is not the eternal Tao

The amount of chiaroscuro an idea harbors is the only index of its profundity.

No one here gets out alive.

He and I…we share a bond. Not love, exactly. It goes beyond that. He is mine as surely as sun follows moon across the sky. Mine before ever I knew he existed. Mine until death and beyond.

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions.

Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

There is nothing without reason.

Yes, we now have to divide up our time like that, between politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

There is no sense in the struggle, but there is no choice but to struggle.

Fashion comes and goes, but style is eternal.

No use saying necessity is making a mistake.