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To be simple is no small matter.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Small
Simple
Matter

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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Beautiful things spoil nothing.
Gustave Flaubert
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I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.
Gustave Flaubert
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What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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I have dreamed much and have done very little.
Gustave Flaubert
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Talent is a long patience.
Gustave Flaubert
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The morality of art is in its very beauty.
Gustave Flaubert
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Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a monstrosity, something outside of nature.
Gustave Flaubert
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Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
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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We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!
Gustave Flaubert
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COLD. Healthier than heat.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act.
Gustave Flaubert
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DOCTOR. Always preceded by 'The good'. Among men, in familiar conversation, 'Oh! balls, doctor!' Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: 'you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.'
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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We have all been beaten! Each one has to bear his misfortune! Resign yourself!
Gustave Flaubert
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Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.
Gustave Flaubert