Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 7

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• Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dog, Writing, Literature

  7 Copy quote

• He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Believe, Men, Vanity

  5 Copy quote

• I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sweet, Wine, Men

  Gustave Flaubert (1991). “Early Writings”, p.44, U of Nebraska Press

  14 Copy quote

• Women want you to deceive them: they force you to, and if you resist, they blame you.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Marriage, Want, Blame

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.56, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Forests, Sentences

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.215, Harvard University Press

  5 Copy quote

• The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Philosophy, Design, Humanity

  13 Copy quote

• She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sea, Storm, Here And There

  Gustave Flaubert (1993). “Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life”, Everyman's Library

  9 Copy quote

• How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Way, Appraisal, Performances

  21 Copy quote

• You'll always have to deal with bastards, being lied to, deceived, slandered and ridiculed, but that's to be expected and you must thank heaven when you meet the exception.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heaven, Being Lied, Goodness

  5 Copy quote

• We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Beautiful, Depression, Suicide

  5 Copy quote

• Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Birthday, Age, Today

  21 Copy quote

• But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Passion, Space, Crowds

  "Madame Bovary".

  16 Copy quote

• Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Boredom, Goal, Principal

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.113, Harvard University Press

  5 Copy quote

• Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Food, Book, Home

  5 Copy quote

• (Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dust, Egypt, Gleam

  8 Copy quote

• A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire luring her on, some convention holding her back.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Women, Struggle, Passion

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.92, Penguin

  16 Copy quote

• There are three thing in the world I love most: the sea, Hamlet, and Don Giovanni.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sea, Three, World

  10 Copy quote

• One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Effort, Style, Stubborn

  5 Copy quote

• Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Hands, Idols, Ties

  Gustave Flaubert (1957). “Madame Bovary”

  12 Copy quote

• It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Horse, Moving, Eye

  "Scenes from a provincial life" by AS Byatt, www.theguardian.com. July 27, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

• He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dream, Funeral, Tombs

  6 Copy quote

• Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Travel, Tired, Literature

  6 Copy quote

• He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Sweet, Book, Character

  7 Copy quote

• I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Men, Feels, Pens

  7 Copy quote

• Talent is long patience.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Patience, Writing, Long

  "Body of Work: 40 Years of Creative Writing at UEA, edited by Giles Foden - review" by Peter Ho Davies, www.theguardian.com. January 21, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

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