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The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Writer
Must
Writing
Life
Navel
Wade
Sea

More quotes by 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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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. The ordinary person today lives better than a king did a century ago but is ungrateful!
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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The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
Gustave Flaubert
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There is no truth. There is only perception.
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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My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
Gustave Flaubert
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He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.
Gustave Flaubert
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The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
Gustave Flaubert
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In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
Gustave Flaubert
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You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything
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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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 principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
Gustave Flaubert
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By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success as I see it is a result, not a goal.
Gustave Flaubert
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A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
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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What an elder sees sitting the young can't see standing.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert