Quotes About Author

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect.

Happiness is salutary for the body but sorrow develops the powers of the spirit.

Our shadows, now parallel, now close together and joined, traced an exquisite pattern at our feet.

We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off and we could like him to provide us with desires... That is the value of reading and is also its inadequacy. To make it into discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.

Ideas are substitutes for sorrows; when the latter change into ideas they lose part of their noxious action on our hearts and even at the first instant their very transformation disengages a feeling of joy.

A 'sadist' of her kind is an artist in evil, which a wholly wicked person could not be...

the idea that 'Life' contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.

but the loss of a memory, like the omission of a phrase during reading, rather than making for uncertainty, can lead to a premature certainty.

A work in which there are theories is like an object upon which the price is marked.

One wants to be understood because one wants to be loved, and one wants to be loved because one loves.

Part of the beauty—and it is the original flaw in this type of literature, from which the famous Lundis are not exempt—lies in the impression made on the readers. It is a collective Venus, of which we have but one truncated limb if we confine ourselves to the thought of the author, for it is fully realised only in the minds of his readers. In them it finds completion.

But for the invert vice begins, not when he establishes a relationship (for too many reasons may govern that), but when he takes his pleasure with women.

The satisfaction an imbecile derives from having right on his side and being certain of success is especially irritating.

Like so many of his sitters, you had to die an early death, and in your eyes as in theirs, one could see the gloom of forebodings alternating with the soft light of resignation.

Similarly, a little later on, the author will point out to us, among the crowd he describes, a "reactionary." That is common enough designation today. But here, I ask Mr. Flaubert again: "A reactionary? How can you recognize one at a distance? Who told you? How do you know about it?" The author evidently is amusing himself, and all these characteristics are invented on a whim.

Notre sagesse commence où celle de l'auteur finit, nous voudrions qu'il nous donnât des réponses, quand tout ce qu'il peut faire est de nous donner des désirs.

Abash'd the Devil stood, And felt how awful goodness is,.....

For Man to tell how human life began is hard; for who himself beginning knew?

Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry; And in themselves seek virtue; and to themselves All glory arrogate, to God give none

My voice thou oft hast heard and hast not feared, But oft rejoiced

Hell's dread Emperor

They themselves ordained their Fall. The first sort by their own suggestion fell Self-tempted, self-depraved.

Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught, His proud imaginations thus displayed:—

pain? where there is then no good 31: For which to strive, no strife can grow up there