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I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Made
Priests
Decided
High
Literature
Call
Though
Hate
Even
Realism

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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?
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Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
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Everything is there: the love of Art.
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I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.
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I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
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All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.
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One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
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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.
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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.
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DOCTOR. Always preceded by 'The good'. Among men, in familiar conversation, 'Oh! balls, doctor!' Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: 'you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.'
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I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.
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Success as I see it is a result, not a goal.
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A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
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As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.
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And he beholds the moon like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.
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It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
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It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
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One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
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To be simple is no small matter.
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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?
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