Gustave Flaubert: Likeness

Gustave Flaubert was French writer (1821–1880). Explore interesting quotes on likeness.
Gustave Flaubert: 196 quotes11 likes

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”

Gustave Flaubert

Correspondence, Letters to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie
Variant: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.
Context: Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live. (June 1857)

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, for an eternity. For an infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”

Gustave Flaubert

“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.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.”

Gustave Flaubert book November

Source: November

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

Gustave Flaubert

9 December 1852
Correspondence, Letters to Madame Louise Colet

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

Gustave Flaubert

Source: The Temptation of St. Antony

“Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”

Gustave Flaubert

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857

“Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?”

Gustave Flaubert

“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary