Gustave Flaubert quotes - page 2

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it. (Gustave Flaubert)
One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
Gustave Flaubert
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
Gustave Flaubert
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Gustave Flaubert
She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
Gustave Flaubert
Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom.
Gustave Flaubert
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
Gustave Flaubert
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.
Gustave Flaubert
Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again. (Gustave Flaubert)
What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.
Gustave Flaubert
Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.
Gustave Flaubert
She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
Gustave Flaubert
After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.
Gustave Flaubert
She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.
Gustave Flaubert
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Gustave Flaubert
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
Gustave Flaubert
I don't believe that happiness is possible, but I think tranquility is.
Gustave Flaubert
Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?
Gustave Flaubert
The brazen arms were working more quickly. They paused no longer. Every time that a child was placed in them the priests of Moloch spread out their hands upon him to burden him with the crimes of the people, vociferating: "They are not men but oxen!" and the multitude round about repeated: "Oxen! oxen!" The devout exclaimed: "Lord! Eat!" (Gustave Flaubert)
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave Flaubert
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
Gustave Flaubert
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
Gustave Flaubert
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Gustave Flaubert