Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

He had heard these things said to him so often that for him there was nothing original about them. Emma was like any other of his mistresses, and the charm of novelty slipping off gradually like a peace of clothing revealed in his nakedness the eternal monotony of passion which always assumes the same form and uses the same languages. He could not perceive, this man of such broad experiences, the difference in feelings that might underlay similarities of expression.

human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

Abituata alla tranquillità, desiderava per contrasto tutto ciò che era movimentato. Amava il mare soltanto per le sue tempeste, e la vegetazione soltanto se cresceva a stento e rada in mezzo alle rovine.

It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away.

But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes." ? Gustave Flaubert

When you are some-'one', why would you wish to be some-'thing'?

Chaque soir, quand sa besogne était finie, il regagnait sa mansarde, et il cherchait dans les livres de quoi justifier ses rêves.

England and Brittany were places one came back from. But America, the colonies, and the Antilles were lost in some unknown region on the other side of the world.

She put him near the front door and a number of visitors were surprised that he would not answer to the name 'Polly', which is what all parrots were supposed to be called.

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed.

Le monde est l'Å"uvre d'un Dieu en délire.

Such killings were part of the natural order of things, an inevitable consequence of belonging to a royal household.

No, read in order to live.

This is indeed a funny country. Yesterday, for example, we were in a cafe which is one of the best in Cairo, and there were, at the same time as ourselves, inside, a donkey shitting, and a gentleman who was pissing in a corner. No one finds that odd; no one says anything.

One ought to know everything, to write. All of us scribblers are monstrously ignorant. If only we weren't lacking in stamina, what a rich field of ideas and similes we could tap! Books that have been the source of entire literatures, like Homer and Rabelais, contain the sum of all the knowledge of their times. They knew everything, those fellows, and we know nothing.

The mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the idea?

Spiritul acesta, pozitiv în mijlocul exalt?rilor sale, care iubise biserica pentru florile ei, muzica pentru cuvintele romanÅ£elor, literatura pentru aÅ£â??rile ei pasionale, se r?zvr?tea în faÅ£a misterelor credinÅ£ei, dup? cum se îndârjea ÅŸi mai aprig împotriva disciplinei de nesuportat pentru firea ei.

Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.

L'action, pour certains hommes, est d'autant plus impraticable que le désir est plus fort. La méfiance d'eux-mêmes les embarrasse, la crainte de déplaire les épouvante; d'ailleurs, les affections profondes ressemblent aux honnêtes femmes; elles ont peur d'être découvertes, et passent dans la vie les yeux baissés.

and now, their great love, in which she dwelt immersed, seemed to dwindle beneath her, like the waters that vanish into the bed of the river, and she could see the mud.

I call on your pride. Remember what you've done, what you dream of doing, and rise up. Great Heavens, consider yourself with more respect!

Elle se laissait aller au bercement des mélodies et se sentait elle-même vibrer de tout son être comme si les archets des violons se fussent promenés sur ses nerfs.

Anyway, what was the use? Women's hearts were like those desks full of secret drawers that fit one inside another; you struggle with them, you break your fingernails, and at the bottom you find a withered flower, a little dust, or nothing at all!