Gustave Flaubert Quotes - Page 9

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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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• 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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• As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Spring, Heart, Break Off

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• I am alone on this road strewn with bones and bordered by ruins! Angels have their brothers, and demons have their infernal companions. Yet I have but the sound of my scythe when it harvests, my whistling arrows, my galloping horse. Always the sound of the same wave eating away at the world

  Gustave Flaubert

  Brother, Horse, Angel

  Gustave Flaubert (1991). “Early Writings”, p.147, U of Nebraska Press

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• Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Rain, Caring, Blow

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• Sometimes I think I'm liquefying like an old Camembert.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Thinking, Sometimes

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• The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

  Gustave Flaubert

  White, Criticism, Fleas

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• But some day sooner or later our passion would have cooled - inevitably - it's the way with everything human.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Passion, Way, Sooner Or Later

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Madame Bovary”, p.253, Vintage

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Soul, World, Principal

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• 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

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Simple, Baffled, Should

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• Adultery ... could be as banal as marriage.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Adultery

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

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• 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

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Bears, Beaten, Misfortunes

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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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• Be orderly and disciplined in daily life, like a good bourgeois, so that I might be wild and violent in my art.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Art, Might, Daily Life

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• Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Beautiful, Feet, Sick

  Gustave Flaubert (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert (Illustrated)”, p.195, Delphi Classics

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• 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

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• When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, Thinking, Make You Think

  Gustave Flaubert (1991). “Early Writings”, p.10, U of Nebraska Press

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• I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Country, Reading, Character

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