Memoirs of a Madman Quotes

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“But for the man who watches the leaves trembling in the wind’s breath, the rivers meandering through the meadows, life twisting and turning and swirling through things, men living, doing good and evil, the sea rolling its waves and the sky with its expanse of lights, and who asks himself why these leaves are there, why the water flows, why life itself is such a terrible torrent plunging towards the boundless ocean of death in which it will lose itself, why men walk about, labor like ants, why the tempest, why the sky so pure and the earth so foul – these questions lead to a darkness from which there is no way out.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“If there is on earth, and among all these things of nothing, a belief worthy of adoration, if there is anything holy, pure and sublime, anything answering that immoderate desire for the infinite and the vague that we call the soul, it is art.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.
”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“Everyone rushes wherever his instincts impel him, the populace swarms like insects over a corpse, poets pass by without having the time to sculpt their thoughts, hardly have they scribbled their ideas down on sheets of paper than the sheets are blown away; everything glitters and everything resounds in this masquerade, beneath its ephemeral royalties and its cardboard scepters, gold flows, wine cascades, cold debauchery lifts her skirts and jigs around…horror! horror! and then there hangs over it all a veil that each one grabs part of to hide himself the best he can. Derision! Horror – horror!”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“Open them, weak yet proud man, pitiful ant that struggles to crawl over its
speck of dust! You declare yourself free and great, and for all the wretchedness of
your life you hold yourself in high esteem, celebrating – no doubt in a spirit of
derision – your rotten and transient flesh. And then you imagine that this beautiful
life, lived out between a little pride that you call greatness, and that base selfinterest
which is at the heart of your society, will be rewarded by some form of
immortality. Immortality for you – more lascivious than the monkey, more evil
than the tiger, more crawling than the serpent? Come on! Show me a paradise for
the monkey, the tiger, the snake, a paradise of lust, of cruelty and baseness, a
paradise of selfishness – eternity for this dust, immortality for this nothingness.
You boast of being free and of being able to do what you call good and evil?
Doubtless so that you can be denounced more rapidly, for what good can you
possibly do? Is a single one of your gestures produced by anything other than
pride or self-interest?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“So when will this society, bastardised by every debauchery of mind, body and
soul, finally come to an end?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“Da bambino amavo ciò che si vede, da adolescente quello che si sente: da uomo, non amo più nulla.
E tuttavia quante cose ho nell'animo, quanta intima forza e quanti oceani di collera e d'amore si urtano e s'infrangono in questo cuore così debole, così malato, così stanco, così inaridito!
Mi dicono di riprendere a vivere, di mescolarmi alla folla!... ma come può un ramo spezzato riprendere a dar frutti? Come può la foglia strappata dal vento e trascinata nella polvere rinverdire? E perché così giovane provo tanto disgusto? Cosa posso saperne? Forse era il mio destino vivere così, stanco prima ancora di aver portato il fardello, ansimante prima ancora di aver corso.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman