Top 450 Gustave Flaubert Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “Emma repeated to herself, “Good Heavens! Why did I marry?”

— Gustave Flaubert

352. “And on the endless dusty ribbon of the highway, on sunken roads vaulted over by branches, on paths between stands of grain that rose to his knees, the sun on his shoulders and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the night’s bliss, his spirit at peace and his flesh content, he would ride on his way ruminating his happiness, like someone who keeps savoring, hours later, the fragrance of the truffles he has eaten for dinner.”

— Gustave Flaubert

353. “Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur.”

— Gustave Flaubert

354. “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

355. “How wonderful to find in living creatures the same substance as those which make up minerals. Nevertheless they felt a sort of humiliation at the idea that their persons contained phosphorous like matches, albumen like white of egg, hydrogen gas like street lamps.”

— Gustave Flaubert

356. “She now felt an incessant and universal numbness.”

— Gustave Flaubert

357. “This was how they wished they had been: each was creating an ideal into which he was now fitting his past life.”

— Gustave Flaubert

358. “While there’s life there’s hope.”

— Gustave Flaubert

359. “Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”

— Gustave Flaubert

360. “And he was beginning to feel that discouragement which is engendered by a life of repetition, when no interest guides nor expectation sustains it.”

— Gustave Flaubert

361. “But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d’Or inn, the chemist’s shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk.”

— Gustave Flaubert

362. “Het was een van die zuivere gevoelens die het normale leven niet verstoren, die men koestert omdat ze zeldzaam zijn en waarvan het verlies dieper zou kwetsen dan dat het bezit voldoening schenkt.”

— Gustave Flaubert

363. “Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the “upper ten” that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.”

— Gustave Flaubert

364. “The more ideas they had the more they suffered.”

— Gustave Flaubert

365. “Their separation was becoming intolerable. “I would rather die!” said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. “Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?”

— Gustave Flaubert

366. “What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day?”

— Gustave Flaubert

367. “But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men.”

— Gustave Flaubert

368. “We have all been beaten! Each one has to bear his misfortune! Resign yourself!”

— Gustave Flaubert

369. “What’s improper about it?” retorted the clerk. “Everybody does it in Paris!” It was an irresistible and conclusive argument.”

— Gustave Flaubert

370. “Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.”

— Gustave Flaubert

371. “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.”

— Gustave Flaubert

372. “He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.”

— Gustave Flaubert

373. “As there was no rational foundation for Frederick’s complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any real misfortune, Martinon was unable to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this work-woman, he felt perfectly happy.”

— Gustave Flaubert

374. “The hearts of women are like little pieces of furniture wherein things are secreted, full of drawers fitted into each other; one hurts himself, breaks his nails in opening them, and then finds within only some withered flower, a few grains of dust – or emptiness! And then perhaps he felt afraid of learning too much about the matter.”

— Gustave Flaubert

375. “Rich or poor, victors or vanquished, I make no allowance for any of them. I don’t want love or hate, pity or anger. Sympathy is another matter. There is never enough of that.”

— Gustave Flaubert

376. “Madame Bovary was nog nooit zo mooi geweest als nu; zij bezat de raadselachtige schoonheid die uit vreugde, geestdrift en succes voortspruit, een schoonheid die ontstaat wanneer de aard van het wezen harmonieert met de uiterlijke omstandigheden.”

— Gustave Flaubert

377. “When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles’s passion was nothing very exorbitant.”

— Gustave Flaubert

378. “A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.”

— Gustave Flaubert

379. “Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that’s the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.”

— Gustave Flaubert

380. “Before her marriage, she had believed that what she was experiencing was love; but since the happiness that should have resulted from that love had not come, she thought she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by the words bliss, passion, and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books.”

— Gustave Flaubert

381. “Zij haatte niemand meer; een wemelend halfduister daalde neer over haar brein, en van alle aardse klanken hoorde Emma alleen nog de gestadige klacht van dit arme hart, zacht en vaag, als de laatste klanken van een wegstervende symfonie.”

— Gustave Flaubert

382. “Accustomed to the tranquil side of nature, she sought the dramatic in its stead. She loved the sea only for its storms, and the green grass only when it grew in patches among ruins.”

— Gustave Flaubert

383. “However, all this reading had disturbed their brains.”

— Gustave Flaubert

384. “Tout au milieu, et dans le disque meme du soleil, rayonne la face de Jesus-Christ. Antoine fait le signe de la croix et se remet en prieres.”

— Gustave Flaubert

385. “It seemed to her that certain places on the earth must yield happiness, like a plant peculiar to that soil and growing poorly anywhere else.”

— Gustave Flaubert

386. “Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble.”

— Gustave Flaubert

387. “A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains.”

— Gustave Flaubert

388. “Sometimes your words come back to me like a distant echo, like the sound of a bell carried by the wind, and when I read love passages in. books, it seems to me that it is you about whom I am reading.”

— Gustave Flaubert

389. “The only way not to be unhappy is to shut yourself up in art, and count everything else as nothing.”

— Gustave Flaubert

390. “She plained of love, she longed for wings.”

— Gustave Flaubert

391. “Love, that marvelous thing which had hitherto been like a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies, was at last within her grasp.”

— Gustave Flaubert

392. “This man could teach you nothing; he knew nothing, he wished for nothing. He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought to him.”

— Gustave Flaubert

393. “Love, she believed, should come on all at once, with great claps of thunder and lightning – a hurricane from heaven that falls upon your life, turns it topsy-turvy, tears up intentions like leaves and sweeps your whole heart into the abyss.”

— Gustave Flaubert

394. “It was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on.”

— Gustave Flaubert

395. “Darwin. Celui qui dit que nous descendons du singe.”

— Gustave Flaubert

396. “Even at table she would bring her book, leafing through the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Vicomte always recurred in her reading. She drew comparisons between him and the invented characters. But little by little the circle whose centre he occupied widened around him, and that halo of glory he wore, straying from his face, spread itself further off, to illuminate other dreams.”

— Gustave Flaubert

397. “La parole est un laminoir qui allonge toujours les sentiments.”

— Gustave Flaubert

398. “There was a diabolical effrontery in her fiery eyes, the heavy eyelids that drooped suggestively, persuasively, and the young man felt himself weakening beneath the silent willpower of this woman who was asking him to commit a crime.”

— Gustave Flaubert

399. “First he anointed her eyes, once so covetous of all earthly luxuries; then her nostrils, so gluttonous of caressing breezes and amorous scents; then her mouth, so prompt to lie, so defiant in pride, so loud in lust; then her hands that had thrilled to voluptuous contacts; and finally the soles of her feet, once so swift when she had hastened to slake her desires, and now never to walk again.”

— Gustave Flaubert

400. “One need not possess joys in order to taste their bitterness! Even to view them from afar off begets loathing of them. Thou must be fatigued by the monotony of the same actions, the length of the days, the hideousness of the world, the stupidity of the sun?”

— Gustave Flaubert