Quotes from work
Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Gustave FlaubertOriginal title Madame Bovary (French, 1857)

Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

“She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“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

“Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

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

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

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

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

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

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“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?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

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

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“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?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“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.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

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