Quote

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Style
Words
Soul
Work
Much
Flesh

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
Gustave Flaubert
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What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert
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Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.
Gustave Flaubert
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You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of 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'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 day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.
Gustave Flaubert
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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Gustave Flaubert
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Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.
Gustave Flaubert
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… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!
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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I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.
Gustave Flaubert
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A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
Gustave Flaubert
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The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
Gustave Flaubert
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It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities.
Gustave Flaubert
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Women want you to deceive them: they force you to, and if you resist, they blame you.
Gustave Flaubert
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Antiquite . en tout ce qui s'y rapporte: Est poncif, embe tant! etc. Antiquity. And everything to do with it, cliche d and boring.
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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After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
Gustave Flaubert