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I go from exasperation to a state of collapse, then I recover and go from prostration to Fury, so that my average state is one of being annoyed.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Collapse
Average
State
States
Prostration
Exasperation
Recover
Annoyed
Fury

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
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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.
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Iced champagne was served, and the feel of the cold wine in her mouth gave Emma a shiver that ran over her from head to toe.
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Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.
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In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
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He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.
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On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
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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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We have all been beaten! Each one has to bear his misfortune! Resign yourself!
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Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
Gustave Flaubert
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A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.
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I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.
Gustave Flaubert
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What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.
Gustave Flaubert
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I am finding it very hard to get my novel started. I suffer from stylistic abscesses and sentences keep itching without coming to a head.
Gustave Flaubert
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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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!
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert
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But an infinity of passions can be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a tiny space.
Gustave Flaubert
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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.
Gustave Flaubert