Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 9

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• I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Average, Annoyed, States

  18 Copy quote

• There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Taken, Character

  4 Copy quote

• Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Memories, Two, Together

  Gustave Flaubert, Margaret Mauldon, Mark Overstall (2008). “Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners”, p.51, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

• DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)

  Gustave Flaubert

  Photography, Ideas, Daguerreotypes

  7 Copy quote

• … 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”

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Memories, Dating, Literature

  95 Copy quote

• Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar - very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Party, Coffee, Taken

  Gustave Flaubert (1968). “Dictionary of Accepted Ideas”, p.24, New Directions Publishing

  15 Copy quote

• One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Life, Looks, Charm

  24 Copy quote

• The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Giving, Generous

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert (Illustrated)”, p.4157, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

• Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Fall, Heart, Sky

  Gustave Flaubert (2015). “Greatest Works of Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary, Senitmental Education, November, A Simple Heart, Herodias and more”, p.89, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

• Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Wings, Bird, Unbearable

  Gustave Flaubert (2015). “The Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs and Letters: Original Versions of the Novels and Stories in French, An Interactive Bilingual Edition with Literary Essays on Flaubert by Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence”, p.243, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

• May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dog, May, Ripening

  Gustave Flaubert (1954). “The Selected Letters”

  5 Copy quote

• Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Life, Artist, Inspire

  8 Copy quote

• To see one's name in print! Some people commit a crime for no other reason.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Names, People, Reason

  Gustave Flaubert (1968). “Dictionary of Accepted Ideas”, p.74, New Directions Publishing

  5 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

• Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Goal, Desire, Consequence

  4 Copy quote

• And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Flower, Adventure, Phrases

  5 Copy quote

• What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Simple, Baffled, Should

  4 Copy quote

• Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heaven Sent, Feelings, Storm

  4 Copy quote

• I have patience in all things - as far as the antechamber.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Patience, Having Patience, All Things

  4 Copy quote

• The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Soul, World, Principal

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

• There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, Thinking

  5 Copy quote

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