Top 450 Gustave Flaubert Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

406. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

409. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

417. “The head-master made a.”

— Gustave Flaubert

418. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

420. “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

421. “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

422. “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

423. “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

424. “Argent. Cause de tout le mal.”

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

426. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

431. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

435. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

437. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

439. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

442. “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

443. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

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

— Gustave Flaubert

446. “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

447. “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

448. “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

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

— Gustave Flaubert

450. “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