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She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Vague
Novels
Plays
Poetry
Novel
Books
Book
Heroine
Play
Heroines

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
Gustave Flaubert
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But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.
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As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.
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I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Gustave Flaubert
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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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Stupidity is an immovable object: you can't try to attack it wiithout being broken by it.
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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What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
Gustave Flaubert
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The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.
Gustave Flaubert
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Gustave Flaubert
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Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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Life must be a constant education one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
Gustave Flaubert
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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!
Gustave Flaubert
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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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It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
Gustave Flaubert
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We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.
Gustave Flaubert
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Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Gustave Flaubert
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What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
Gustave Flaubert
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[The artist] is like a pump he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
Gustave Flaubert