Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

If you want to be happy, it is necessary not to be too intelligent.

In every parting there comes a moment when the beloved is already no longer with us.

Future joys are like tropical shores; like a fragrant breeze, they extend their innate softness to the immense inland world of past experience, and we are lulled by this intoxication into forgetting the unseen horizons beyond.

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

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.

I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.

Human Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

The most exaggerated speeches usually hid the weakest of feelings - as though the fullness of the soul did not overflow into the emptiest phrases, since no one can ever express the exact measure of his needs, his conceptions or his sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked pot on which we beat out rhythms for bears to dance to when we are striving to make music that will wring tears from the stars

How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like street lamps.

Charles' conversation was as flat as a street pavement, on which everybody's ideas trudged past, in their workaday dress, provoking no emotion, no laughter, no dreams.

as though the soul's abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of their needs, their ideas, their afflictions, and since human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing-bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars.

Contradiction is what keeps sanity in place.

One thinks of nothing,' he continued; 'the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blinding with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.

Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto di essere innamorata, ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere da questo amore non esisteva, ed ella pensava ormai di essersi sbagliata. Cercava ora di capire cosa volessero dire realmente le parole felicità, passione, ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate così belle nei libri.

The devil is in the detail is an idiom that refers to a catch or mysterious element hidden in the details. It derives from God is in the detail attributed to German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). Earlier on Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) said Le bon Dieu est dans le detail. Meaning that things seem simple at first but are more complex or require more time and effort than expected. The earlier idea is that details are important; whatever one does should be done thoroughly.

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

Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere.

Je suis né avec le désir de mourir.

What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.

Einen einzigen Gedanken hatte er, eine einzige Liebe, eine einzige Leidenschaft: die Bücher! Und diese Liebe, diese Leidenschaft verbrannten sein Inneres, verdarben sein Leben, verschlangen sein Dasein.

The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We're lucky to be living now.

Od svega ovoga što sledi niko ništa nije znao, i oni koji su me svakog dana vi?ali nisu znali ništa više od drugih; bili su, u odnosu na mene, kao postelja u kojoj spavam i koja ne zna moje snove. A usotalom, zar ljudsko srce nije ogromno samovanje u koje niko ne može da prodre?

His wife had been wild about him at first; she had treated him with an amorous servility that had turned him against her all the more. Vivacious, effusive, and very loving in the early days, over the years she had, like a stale wine that turns to vinegar, grown ill-humoured, waspish, and nervy.

Mi amistad es como los camellos. En cuanto se pone en marcha ya no hay modo de detenerla.