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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
Read
Inspirational
Order
Amuse
Live
Instruction
Book
Ambitious
Children
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Life
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Purpose

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
Gustave Flaubert
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I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself.
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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One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert
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Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.
Gustave Flaubert
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Stupidity is something unshakable nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave Flaubert
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The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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
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And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.
Gustave Flaubert
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Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
Gustave Flaubert
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By working one can bend fortune. She is fond of crafty men.
Gustave Flaubert
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I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Gustave Flaubert
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To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert
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It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
Gustave Flaubert
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But some day sooner or later our passion would have cooled - inevitably - it's the way with everything human.
Gustave Flaubert
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We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.
Gustave Flaubert
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How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.
Gustave Flaubert
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Gustave Flaubert