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Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Horrible
Bear
Bears
Living
Art
Done
Life
World
Avoiding

More quotes by Gustave Flaubert

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I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times...The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breath with them.
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Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.
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Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
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How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.
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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
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I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
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Me and my books in the same apartment, like a gherkin in its vinegar.
Gustave Flaubert
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After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
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What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert
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I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
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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The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!
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There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more
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You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
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!
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The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel.
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The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.
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
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Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
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