Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

The countryside stretched flat as far as the eye could see; and the tufts of trees clustered around the farmhouses were widely spaced dark purple stains on the vast grey surface that merged at the horizon into the dull tone of the sky.

No hay que tocar a los ídolos: su dorado se nos queda en las manos

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe

Some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

Contact with the world, with which I have been steadily rubbing shoulders now for fourteen months, makes me feel more and more like returning to my shell. I hate the crowd, the herd. It seems to me always atrociously stupid or vile.

Melancholy is a sensual pleasure that is deliberately provoked. How many people shut themselves away to make themselves sadder, or to weep beside a stream, or choose a sentimental book! We are constantly building and unbuilding ourselves.

Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

As there was no rational foundation for Frederick's complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any real misfortune, Martinon was unable to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this work-woman, he felt perfectly happy.

Self-possession depends on its environment.

What exasperated her was that Charles seemed to have no notion of her torment. His conviction that he was making her happy struck her as impudent imbecility, his uxorious complacency as ingratitude.

My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my own doubt.

Desiderava al tempo stesso morire e vivere a Parigi.

Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.

But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk.

Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the upper ten that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.

When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say. But with me, replied Emma, it was after marriage that it began.

Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.

I am the obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face.

What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.

Death always brings with it a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it for the human mind to realize and resign itself to the blank and utter nothingness.

privea spre cer cu ochi plini de blesteme; dar nici m?car o frunz? nu se clinti din aceast? pricin?.

Love, that marvelous thing which had hitherto been like a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies, was at last within her grasp.

What's improper about it?" retorted the clerk. "Everybody does it in Paris!" It was an irresistible and conclusive argument.

Ja volim jesen, to je žalosno godišnje doba kao stvoreno za uspomene. Kada stabla više nemaju liš?e, kada nebo zadržava još i u sutonu ri?u šaru koja pozla?uje uvelu travu, slatko je gledati gdje se gasi sve ono što je još nedavno gorjelo u vama.