02UndatedDoesn'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 / quote ↗
03UndatedI'm no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
05UndatedWith a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady’s album – and this is always a gallant thing to do, whatever you may say.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
06UndatedHuman life is a sad show, undoubtedly; ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling than to conjure away the burden and bitterness.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
07UndatedAnd so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
08UndatedThe artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
11Undated[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 / quote ↗
12UndatedIs it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
13UndatedHe seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that’s for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I’ll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
15UndatedBut her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
16UndatedHis eagerness had turned into a routine; he embraced her at the same time every day. It was a habit like any other, a favourite pudding after the monotony of dinner.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
17UndatedThis haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
18UndatedFor six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
19UndatedOur ignorance of history makes us libel to our own times. People have always been like this.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
20UndatedOur ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
21UndatedA good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
22UndatedWhen will someone write from the point of view of a joke, that is to say theway God sees events from above?Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
23UndatedLove is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
24UndatedI believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.Gustave Flaubert / quote ↗
