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We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

Gustave Flaubert

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Gustave Flaubert
Age: 58 †
Born: 1821
Born: December 12
Died: 1880
Died: May 8
Novelist
Writer
Flaubert
Gilding
Idols
Remain
Touch
Hands

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The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
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Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
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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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(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
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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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And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.
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COLD. Healthier than heat.
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I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself.
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There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.
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We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!
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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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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.
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Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.
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Everything is there: the love of Art.
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Women want you to deceive them: they force you to, and if you resist, they blame you.
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One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
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Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
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He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides
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It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
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