Quotes from Gustave Flaubert

alors, s'appuyant contre le secrétaire, il resta jusqu'au soir perdu dans une rêverie douloureuse. Elle l'avait aimé, après tout.

Dietro le Tuileries, il cielo si tingeva di ardesia, gli alberi del giardino formavano due masse enormi, violacee in alto. Si accendevano i lampioni a gas, e la Senna, verdastra in tutta la sua estensione, si lacerava in un marezzo d'argento contro i pilastri del ponte.

alla sur la Pâture, au haut de la côte d'Argueil, à l'entrée de la forêt ; il se coucha par terre sous les sapins, et regarda le ciel à travers ses doigts. – Comme je m'ennuie ! se disait-il, comme je m'ennuie !

The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns.

Eh bien, tout doucement, un jour chassant l'autre, un printemps sur un hiver et un automne par-dessus un été, ça a coulé brin à brin, miette à miette ; ça s'en est allé, c'est parti, c'est descendu, je veux dire, car il vous reste toujours quelque chose au fond, comme qui dirait… un poids, là, sur la poitrine !

Mais, à mesure que se serrait davantage l'intimité de leur vie, un détachement se faisait qui la déliait de lui.

He did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work it is grinding out.

je ne serai jamais qu'un écrivailleur honni, un vaniteux misérable. // l shall never be anything but a despised scribbler, a poor conceited fool.

A man becomes a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier

But life is not a series of deeds. My life is my thoughts.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered.

Flaubert complains in a letter to Colet, "What a bitch of a thing prose is! It's never finished; there's always something to redo. Yet I think one can give it the consistency of verse. A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

De dónde venía aquella insatisfacción de la vida, aquella instantánea corrupción de las cosas en las que se apoyaba?...

Criticism must be like natural history, with absence of moralism

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.

Aquel vestido de sencillos pliegues ocultaba un corazón atormentado, y aquellos labios tan púdicos en ningún momento descubrían la tormenta que se libraba en su interior.

As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits.

Sé ordinario y metódico en tu vida para que puedas ser violento y original en tu trabajo

Everybody can't be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste!

And Emma wondered exactly what was meant in life by the words 'bliss', 'passion', 'ecstasy', which had looked so beautiful in books

A blow lasts a minute but is anticipated for months—our passions are like volcanoes: always rumbling but only intermittently erupting.

What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies.

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.