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… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“How she listened, the first time, to the sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholia echoing out across heaven and earth! If her childhood… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah!… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“I lead a bitter life, devoid of all external joy and in which I have nothing to keep me going but a… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“He was savoring for the first time the ineffable subtleties of feminine refinement. Never had he encountered this grace of language, this… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“There was always an uncertain promise dangling in the future like a golden fruit hanging from some fantastic bough.” — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“[H]e was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“In every parting there comes a moment when the beloved is already no longer with us.” — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzying rate. We are dancing not on… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Caught up in life, you see it badly. You suffer from it or enjoy it too much. The artist, in my opinion, is a… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
“But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows,… — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
The writer must wade into life as into the sea, but only up to the navel. — Gustave Flaubert Copy Share Image
