Quote

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
Make
Laugh
Highest
Wonderment
Laughing
Rouse
Difficult
Lust
Art
Fill
Nature
Achievement
Seems
Anger
Doe
Cry

More quotes by 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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As words have an effective power of their own, curses reported against someone might turn against the speaker.
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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.
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As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.
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Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
Gustave Flaubert
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By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.
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It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return.
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Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.
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It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
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Reveal art conceal the artist.
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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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The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
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Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
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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.
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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
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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Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.
Gustave Flaubert
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We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!
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The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
Gustave Flaubert
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Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
Gustave Flaubert