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
Moving
Sea
Expanse
Doesn
Ocean
Boundless
Seems
Sight
Freely
Soul
Infinite
Moves
Giving
Asked
Ideal
Mind
Thoughts
Presence
Bovary
Seem
Rise
Elevates
Gives
Ideals
Madame

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He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
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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.
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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!
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There is no truth. There is only perception.
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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.
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Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
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For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.
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I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.
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Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.
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As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.
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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.
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The future is the worst thing about the present.
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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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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.
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The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
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The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
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We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.
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The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.
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For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
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