Gustave Flaubert: Citations en anglais (Page 4)

“Love art. Of all lies, it is the least untrue.”

“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.”

“Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?”

“Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.”

“Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.”

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

“For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.”

“Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?”

“She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.”

“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.”

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

“When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women”

“Read in order to live.”

“To be simple is no small matter.”

“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?”

“In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.”

“(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.”

“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.”

“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”