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Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Pissing
Drinking
Ocean
History
Writing
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More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.
Gustave Flaubert
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I like prostitution. My heart has never failed to pound at the sight of one of those provocatively dressed women walking in the rain under the gaslamps, just as the sight of monks in their robes and girdles touches some ascetic, hidden corner of my soul.
Gustave Flaubert
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The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
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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The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.
Gustave Flaubert
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The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful one must sense him everywhere but never see him.
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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I have patience in all things - as far as the antechamber.
Gustave Flaubert
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May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!
Gustave Flaubert
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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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Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?
Gustave Flaubert
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And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.
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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Talent is a long patience.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success as I see it is a result, not a goal.
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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My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
Gustave Flaubert
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Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
Gustave Flaubert
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Gustave Flaubert
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She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
Gustave Flaubert