Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 10

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• Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Stupid, Ideas, Admire

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmüller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, Belknap Press

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• I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Rain, Heart, Sight

  29 Copy quote

• Je suis autant Chinois que Fran c° ais. I am as much Chinese as French.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Chinese

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• The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Pride, Giving

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• … Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Lines, Empty

  Gustave Flaubert (1949). “Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary”

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• I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Depression, Dream, Ambition

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.118, Harvard University Press

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• My God, this novel makes me break out in a cold sweat! Do you know how much I've written in five months, since the end of August? Sixty-five pages! Each paragraph is good in itself and there are some pages that are perfect. I feel certain. But just because of this, it isn't getting on. It's a series of well-turned, ordered paragraphs which do not flow on from each other. I shall have to unscrew them, loosen the joints, as one does with the masts of a ship when one wants the sail to take more wind.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sweat, August, Wind

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• You can't find the soul with a scalpel.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Soul, Scalpels

  Gustave Flaubert (1976). “Bouvard and Pécuchet”, Penguin Books

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• L'Ide e seule est e ternelle et ne cessaire. The idea alone is eternal and necessary.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ideas, Eternal

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• In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Flower, Passion, Discipline

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• She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Alive

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert (Illustrated)”, p.315, Delphi Classics

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• Madame Bovary is myself.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Literature

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• Tout ce qu'on invente est vrai, soi-en sure. La poesie est une chose aussi precise que la geometrie.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Mathematics, Precise

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• Ah! In fact there are two moralities ... The petty one, the conventional one, the one devised by men, that keeps changing and bellows so loudly, making a commotion down here among us, in a perfectly pedestrian way ... But the other one, the eternal one, is all around and above us, like a landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Men, Sky, Two

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.133, Penguin

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• They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Advice, Opinion

  Gustave Flaubert (1976). “Bouvard and Pécuchet”, Penguin Books

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• It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Memories, Past, Personality

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• For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Men, Desire, Stronger

  "Sentimental Education". Book by Gustave Flaubert, 1869.

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• If you knew all the dreams I've dreamed!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dream, Ifs

  Gustave Flaubert (1957). “Madame Bovary”

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• Didn't love, like a plant from India, require a prepared soil, a particular temperature? Sighs in the moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over hands yielded to a lover, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness thus could not be separated from the balconies of great châteaux filled with idle amusements, a boudoir with silk blinds, a good thick carpet, full of pots of flowers, and a bed raised on a dais, nor from the sparkle of precious stones and shoulder knots on servants' livery.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Love, Flower, Hands

  11 Copy quote

• Art is nothing without form.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Form, Art Is

  Letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846.

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• I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses; and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Suffering, Novel, Sentences

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.151, Harvard University Press

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• Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Character, Comforting, Noble

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Madame Bovary”, p.114, Vintage

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• Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Speech, Amplify, Rolling

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.200, Penguin

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• We have all been beaten! Each one has to bear his misfortune! Resign yourself!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Bears, Beaten, Misfortunes

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• We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Hands, Idols, Should

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.235, Penguin

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