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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
Drinking
Ocean
History
Writing
Like
Pissing

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
Gustave Flaubert
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The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
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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There is no truth. There is only perception.
Gustave Flaubert
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One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
Gustave Flaubert
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Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert
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Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
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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Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Gustave Flaubert
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Years passed and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.
Gustave Flaubert
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He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
Gustave Flaubert
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Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
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
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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Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
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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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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My life which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love will turn out to be like everybody else's - monotonous, sensible, stupid.
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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The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
Gustave Flaubert