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What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Seems
Anger
Doe
Cry
Make
Laugh
Highest
Wonderment
Laughing
Rouse
Difficult
Lust
Art
Fill
Nature
Achievement

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As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.
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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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Success as I see it is a result, not a goal.
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Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
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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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By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.
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Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.
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Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
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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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Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
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A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.
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The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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The cult of art gives pride one never has too much of it.
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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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Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
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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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COLD. Healthier than heat.
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Beautiful things spoil nothing.
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Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.
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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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