Top 450 Gustave Flaubert Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Anyone without religions will always go wrong in the end!”

— Gustave Flaubert

402. “We obtain merit only by our thirst for truth.”

— Gustave Flaubert

403. “But life is not a series of deeds. My life is my thoughts.”

— Gustave Flaubert

404. “He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams. And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below are close to him!”

— Gustave Flaubert

405. “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

406. “Instead of getting drunk at the public, you’d do better to die yourself.”

— Gustave Flaubert

407. “Well,” he said, “don’t you know that there are souls forever in torment? They must have alternate dream and action, the purest passions and the most violent satisfactions, and that way one stumbles into all sorts of whims, of follies.”

— Gustave Flaubert

408. “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

409. “But her own life was as cold as an attic with a north-facing window, and boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of.”

— Gustave Flaubert

410. “All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent.”

— Gustave Flaubert

411. “Un infini de passions peut tenir dans une minute, comme une foule dans un petit espace.”

— Gustave Flaubert

412. “Whereas a man, surely, should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activities, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its grace, initiate you into all mysteries! But this one had nothing to teach; knew nothing, wanted nothing.”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

414. “Her eyes, brimming with tears, glittered like flames seen through water.”

— Gustave Flaubert

415. “BALLOONS – With balloons we will end up going to the moon. We shan’t be able to navigate them any time soon.”

— Gustave Flaubert

416. “ABSINTHE – Extra-violent poison: one glass and you are dead. Journalists drink it while writing their articles. Has killed more soldiers than the Bedouins.”

— Gustave Flaubert

417. “Why could she not lean on the balcony of a Swiss chalet or confine her sadness in a Scottish cottage, with a husband dressed in a long-skirted coat of black velvet, and sporting soft boots, a pointed hat and ruffled sleeves! Well may it have been her wish to confide all these things to someone. But how to express an indiscernible disquiet, which alters its shape like the clouds, which whirls like the wind? So she could not find the words, the opportunity, the boldness.”

— Gustave Flaubert

418. “Anyone who lacks respect for religion comes to a bad end.”

— Gustave Flaubert

419. “At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that took captive my life.”

— Gustave Flaubert

420. “So that was all love was! That was all a woman was! Good Lord, why do we still hunger even when we are sated? Why so many aspirations and so many disappointments? Why is man’s heart so big and life so small? There are days when even the love of the angels would not suffice it, and in a single hour it grows weary of all the caresses of earth.”

— Gustave Flaubert

421. “Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.”

— Gustave Flaubert

422. “The next day, for Emma, was funereal. Everything appeared to her shrouded in a black mist that hovered uncertainly over the surface of things, and grief plunged deep into her soul, moaning softly like the winter wind in an abandonded chateau. She sank into that kind of brooding which comes when you lose something forever, that lassitude you feel after every irreversible event, that pain you suffer when a habitual movement is interrupted, when a long-sustained vibration is suddenly broken off.”

— Gustave Flaubert

423. “She had purchased for herself a blotting-case, stationery, a penholder and some envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she wiped the dust off her shelves, looked at herself in the mirror, took down a book, then, dreaming between the lines, let it fall in her lap. She had a desire to travel, or to go back and live at her convent. She wished both to die and to live in Paris.”

— Gustave Flaubert

424. “As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits.”

— Gustave Flaubert

425. “But what was making her so unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that had overturned her life? And she lifted her head and looked around, as though seeking the cause of what hurt her so.”

— Gustave Flaubert

426. “You!” she said in astonishment; “I thought you very light-hearted.” “Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!”

— Gustave Flaubert

427. “She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.”

— Gustave Flaubert

428. “El genio lo da Dios, pero el talento es cosa nuestra; con una inteligencia recta, amor a lo que se hace y una paciencia sin desfallecimientos, se llega a tenerlo.”

— Gustave Flaubert

429. “Poor thing! She had loved him, after all.”

— Gustave Flaubert

430. “AMBITION – Always preceded by “mad” when it lacks nobility.”

— Gustave Flaubert

431. “Elle aurait voulu ne plus vivre, ou continuellement dormir.”

— Gustave Flaubert

432. “In de muziekles zong zij liedjes over niets dan engeltjes met gouden vleugels, madonna’s, meren, gondeliers: rimpelloze romances die haar tussen de beuzelachtige woorden en de onbeholpen klanken door een korte blik vergunden op de betoverende wereld van de werkelijke sentimenten.”

— Gustave Flaubert

433. “One must not touch idols; the gilt rubs off on one’s hands.”

— Gustave Flaubert

434. “All that people have found fault with as exaggerated in fiction you have made me feel.”

— Gustave Flaubert

435. “And all the time, deep within her, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor she scanned her solitude with desperate eyes for the sight of a white sail far off on the misty horizon. She had no idea what that chance would be, what wind would waft it to her, where it would set her ashore, whether it was a launch or a three-decker, laden with anguish or filled to the portholes with happiness. But every morning when she woke she hoped to find it there.”

— Gustave Flaubert

436. “The reminiscences, far too numerous, on which he dwelt produced a disheartening effect on him; he went no further with the work, and his mental vacuity redoubled.”

— Gustave Flaubert

437. “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

438. “As a child I loved what can be seen, as a teenager what can be felt, as a man I no longer love anything.”

— Gustave Flaubert

439. “Everybody can’t be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste!”

— Gustave Flaubert

440. “Their great love, in which she lived totally immersed, seemed to be subsiding around her, like the river sinking into its bed... and she could see the mud at the bottom.”

— Gustave Flaubert

441. “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

442. “It seemed as if she went through life touching it scarcely at all.”

— Gustave Flaubert

443. “Thou, thou hast no pity save for thine own misery. It is like a remorse that gnaws thee, a savage madness that impels thee to repel the caress of a dog or to frown upon the smile of a child.”

— Gustave Flaubert

444. “A man, at any rate, is free. He can explore the passions and the continents, can surmount obstacles, reach out to the most distant joys. Whereas a woman is constantly thwarted. At once inert and pliant, she has to contend with both physical weakness and legal subordination. Her will is like the veil on her bonnet, fastened by a single string and quivering at every breeze that blows. Always there is a desire that impels and a convention that restrains.”

— Gustave Flaubert

445. “ART – Leads to the poorhouse. What’s the use of it, since we’re replacing it with machines that do better and work faster?”

— Gustave Flaubert

446. “For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.”

— Gustave Flaubert

447. “Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun’s disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendour.”

— Gustave Flaubert

448. “For you have doubtless done as I did at the age of fifteen, you have once thought you were in love with that burning and frenzied love of the kind you’ve seen in books, whereas all you were suffering from was just a slight scratch on the epidermis of your heart left by that iron claw called passion, and you were blowing with all the strength of your imagination on that modest fire that was barely even alight.”

— Gustave Flaubert

449. “Estomac. Toutes les maladies viennent de l’estomac6.”

— Gustave Flaubert

450. “The head-master made a.”

— Gustave Flaubert