Gustave Flaubert: Trending quotes (page 3)

“But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.”

“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.”

“She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.”

“The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”

“Sadness is a vice.”

“He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.”

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

“The more you approach infinity, the deeper you penetrate terror”

“You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything”

“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”

“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”

“The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.”

“Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.”

“By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream”

“After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.”

“Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?”

“What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.”

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.”

“And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.”