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A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Literature
Write
Order
Writing
Men
Superhuman
Needed

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
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The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
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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.'
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One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.
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The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
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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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One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!
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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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Prose is like hair it shines with combing.
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For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
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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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Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
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What an elder sees sitting the young can't see standing.
Gustave Flaubert
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Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
Gustave Flaubert
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A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.
Gustave Flaubert
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Do not imagine you can exorcise what oppresses you in life by giving vent to it in art.
Gustave Flaubert
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What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
Gustave Flaubert
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Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.
Gustave Flaubert
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Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
Gustave Flaubert