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My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Foreground
Imaginary
Backgrounds
Real
Writing

More quotes by 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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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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Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
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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A thing derided is a thing dead a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.
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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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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She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Gustave Flaubert
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Talent is a long patience.
Gustave Flaubert
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[The artist] is like a pump he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
Gustave Flaubert
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After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
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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I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop.
Gustave Flaubert
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The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Gustave Flaubert
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Iced champagne was served, and the feel of the cold wine in her mouth gave Emma a shiver that ran over her from head to toe.
Gustave Flaubert
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Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.
Gustave Flaubert
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The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
Gustave Flaubert
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The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!
Gustave Flaubert
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Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.
Gustave Flaubert