Quote

Doesn't it seem to you, asked Madame Bovary, that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

Gustave Flaubert

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Mind
Thoughts
Presence
Bovary
Seem
Rise
Elevates
Gives
Ideals
Madame
Moving
Sea
Expanse
Doesn
Ocean
Boundless
Seems
Sight
Freely
Soul
Infinite
Moves
Giving
Asked
Ideal

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Image
Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
… 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
Image
What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
I detest my fellow-beings and do not feel that I am their fellow at all
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Thought is the greatest of pleasures —pleasure itself is only imagination—have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams?
Gustave Flaubert
Image
She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
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
Image
I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
By working one can bend fortune. She is fond of crafty men.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
Gustave Flaubert
Image
Talent is a long patience.
Gustave Flaubert