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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

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Children
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Life
Wisdom
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Read
Inspirational
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Amuse
Live
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Ambitious

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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Stupidity is an immovable object: you can't try to attack it wiithout being broken by it.
Gustave Flaubert
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The great natures which are good, are above everything generous and don't begrudge the giving of themselves.
Gustave Flaubert
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I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter
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Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
Gustave Flaubert
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After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Gustave Flaubert
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I have dreamed much and have done very little.
Gustave Flaubert
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Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
Gustave Flaubert
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I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.
Gustave Flaubert
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L'Ide e seule est e ternelle et ne cessaire. The idea alone is eternal and necessary.
Gustave Flaubert
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The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
Gustave Flaubert
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It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
Gustave Flaubert
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When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women
Gustave Flaubert
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You don't know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.
Gustave Flaubert
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One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert
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Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
Gustave Flaubert
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DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)
Gustave Flaubert
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To be simple is no small matter.
Gustave Flaubert
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I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.
Gustave Flaubert
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One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
Gustave Flaubert
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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