Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant.

I lead a bitter life, devoid of all external joy and in which I have nothing to keep me going but a sort of permanent rage, which weeps at times from impotence, but which is constant.

There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset.

Emigres: Earned their livelihood by giving guitar lessons and mixing salads.

Happy are they whose pens fly across the page; I myself hesitate, I falter. I become angry and fearful. My drive diminishes as my taste improves. I brood more over an ill-suited word than I rejoice over a well proportioned paragraph.

I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.

Ella sólo pedía apoyarse en algo más sólido que el amor.

Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can't stiffen up enough to create them.

She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.

We aren't there yet,' said Bouvard. Let's hope not,' said Pecuchet.

How badly arranged the world is. What is the purpose of ugliness, suffering, sadness? Why our powerless dreams? Why everything?

you must - do you hear me, young man? - you must work more than you are doing!

Standing side by side, on some rising ground, they felt, as they drank in the air, the pride of a life more free penetrating into the depths of their souls, with a superabundance of energy, a joy which they could not explain.

Se conocían demasiado para gozar de aquellos embelesos de la pasión que centuplican su gozo. Ella estaba tan hastiada de él como él cansado de ella. Emma volvía a encontrar en el adulterio todas las soserías del matrimonio

J'ai toujours tâché de vivre dans une tour d'ivoire; mais une marée de merde en bat les murs

Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.

Antes de casarse, Emma se había creído enamorada; pero como la felicidad que hubiera debido resultar de aquel amor no había llegado, pensó que necesariamente debía de haberse equivocado. Y trataba de averiguar qué significaban exactamente en la vida las palabras 'dicha', 'pasión' y 'embriaguez', que tan hermosas le habían parecido en los libros

encontrava-se numa dessas crises em que a alma inteira mostra indistintamente o que encerra como o oceano que, nas tempestades, entreabre-se das algas das praia até a areia dos abismos.

Pellerin used to read every available book on aesthetics, in the hope of discovering the true theory of Beauty, for he was convinced that once he had found it he would be able to paint masterpieces.

The man is nothing, the work--all.

So when will this society, bastardised by every debauchery of mind, body and soul, finally come to an end?

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

Why, like all men, she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a languid movement - You are all evil!

Surely it could not have been a dove God had chosen to speak through, since doves could not talk.