Top 450 Gustave Flaubert Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

404. “Avrebbe voluto vivere in qualche vecchio maniero, come quelle castellane dal lungo corsetto che passavano le loro giornate sotto i trifogli delle ogive, col gomito sulla pietra e il mento appoggiato sulla mano, a veder arrivare, dall’estremo orizzonte della campagna, un cavaliere dalla piuma bianca galoppante su un cavallo nero!”

— Gustave Flaubert

405. “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

406. “Het woord is trouwens net een mangel die gevoelens gladstrijkt.”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

409. “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

410. “Anyway, what was the use? Women’s hearts were like those desks full of secret drawers that fit one inside another; you struggle with them, you break your fingernails, and at the bottom you find a withered flower, a little dust, or nothing at all!”

— Gustave Flaubert

411. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

420. “The head-master made a.”

— Gustave Flaubert

421. “Ascend skyward forever and forever,–yet thou wilt not attain the summit. Descend below the earth for billions of billions of centuries: never wilt thou reach the bottom. For there is no summit, there is no bottom; there is no Above, no Below – there is no end.”

— Gustave Flaubert

422. “A blow lasts a minute but is anticipated for months – our passions are like volcanoes: always rumbling but only intermittently erupting.”

— Gustave Flaubert

423. “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

424. “Then, the anxiety occasioned by her change of state, or perhaps a certain agitation caused by the presence of this man had sufficed to make her believe herself possessed at last of that wonderful passion which hitherto had hovered above her like a great bird of rosy plumage in the splendor of a poetic heaven... But she could hardly persuade herself that the quietness of her present life was the happiness of her dreams.”

— Gustave Flaubert

425. “There was no fire in the fireplace, the clock was still ticking, and Emma felt vaguely amazed that all those things should be so calm when there was such turmoil inside her.”

— Gustave Flaubert

426. “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

427. “Argent. Cause de tout le mal.”

— Gustave Flaubert

428. “Un infini de passion peut tenir dans une minute.”

— Gustave Flaubert

429. “The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns.”

— Gustave Flaubert

430. “Why don’t you go grind some almonds?”

— Gustave Flaubert

431. “As a child I dreamt of love – as a young man of fame – as a man, of the tomb, that last love of those who have no love left.”

— Gustave Flaubert

432. “But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him.”

— Gustave Flaubert

433. “How oft the warmth of the sun above Makes a pretty young girl dream of love.”

— Gustave Flaubert

434. “Alles eek haar gehuld in een zwart waas dat over het oppervlak van de dingen zweefde, en het verdriet trok zacht huilend door haar ziel, als de winterwind door een verlaten kasteel. Het was zo’n mijmeren waarin men verzinkt om wat nooit meer terugkomt, een matheid die ons telkens overvalt na een niet te herroepen daad, een smart ten slotte, veroorzaakt door het stokken van een vertrouwde beweging, door het abrupt stilvallen van een lang aangehouden trilling.”

— Gustave Flaubert

435. “Anyone without religions will always go wrong in the end!”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

438. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

440. “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

441. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

443. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

446. “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

447. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

450. “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