Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• 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.

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• 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

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• For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Long, Steps

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• 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

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• The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Powerful, Artist, Literature

  Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie, March 18, 1857.

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• But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Dark, Doors, Ends

  Gustave Flaubert, Geoffrey Wall (1992). “Madame Bovary: provincial lives”, Penguin USA

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• Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ocean, Moving, Sight

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• She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Book, Play, Heroines

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

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• Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Patience, Long, Effort

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• What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Strong, Ideas, Heavy

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

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• Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Block, People, Strange

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• Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Geometry, Poetry Is, Precise

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• In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Jobs, Views, Creating

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• On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Ordinary, World

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

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• She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Tired, Adultery, Emma

  gustave flaubert (1950). “madame bovary”

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• A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Death, Loss, Friend Died

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• One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, One Day, Shells

  "Passion play" by Stephen Romer, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2001.

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• I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Aqueducts, Stories, Flow

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• Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Blessing, Boredom

  Gustave Flaubert (2010). “Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.60, Penguin

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• Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Soul, Style, Flesh

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• Snicker on hearing his name: 'the gentleman who thinks we are descended from the apes.'

  Gustave Flaubert

  Science, Thinking, Names

  Gustave Flaubert (1968). “Dictionary of Accepted Ideas”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

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• And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Moon, Light, Ice

  Gustave Flaubert (2016). “The Temptation of St. Anthony”, p.176, Gustave Flaubert

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• [T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Stars, Long, Soul

  Madame Bovary pt. 1, ch. 12 (1857) (translation by Francis Steegmuller)

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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

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• Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Games, Criticism, Hierarchy

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmuller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, p.15, Harvard University Press

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