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

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

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… 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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
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Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.
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I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself.
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The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.
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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
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Life must be a constant education one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
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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!
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Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
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Talent is a long patience.
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.
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He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
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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.
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I have come to have the firm conviction that vanity is the basis of everything, and finally that what one calls conscience is only inner vanity.
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A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.
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The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
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The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
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