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Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert Quotes

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Famous Gustave Flaubert Quotes

“I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them.”

WantArtHandsFacesFightingStrongWaterWallOceanDrawsEmptyBlueGreenPatientCome UpAttractionCeaseYellowShellsObscurePearlsAbyssVoyagesFishermanDivingGazingHutsRecessEmpty HandsFatal Attraction
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.”

IfsThinkingWayArtistSufferingEnjoyToo MuchMy WayMisfortunesProvidenceMaximsWay Of ThinkingMonstrosity
Book:The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857
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“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.”

MenMeanHas BeensArtFormHumanityLostInterestRoomsMoneyVirtueEconomicOriginalsMerePlastic
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“She remembered the heroines of novels she had read, and the lyrical legion of those adulterous women began to sing in her memory with sisterly voices that enchanted her. Now she saw herself as one of those amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true.”

LongDreamRealityVoiceMemoriesNovelSawsFiguresYouthBecomingRememberedGalleryHeroinesLyricalEnchantedEnviedLegionSisterly
Book:Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life
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“There was an air of indifference about them, a calm produced by the gratification of every passion; and through their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes from the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle one’s vanity—the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women.”

PassionHalfAirSpecialHabitFitHorseCalmPursuitResistanceVanityMannersIndifferenceBreaking DownGratificationHeartedBrutalityHalf HeartedSuaveLoose Women
Book:Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life
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“He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight.”

BookCharacterFormStrangeSweetPagesDelightHeavyDrawingDustTitlesCoveredBizarrePerfumeGothicLoadedManuscriptsOdor
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”

YoungGrowsBirdWingsPurityRegionsFar AwayUnbearable
Book:The Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs and Letters: Original Versions of the Novels and Stories in French, An Interactive Bilingual Edition with Literary Essays on Flaubert by Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence
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“It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.”

PeopleMenWritingMadeEyeTodayMovingUniverseSunWindLoversCreatingMen And WomenRedHorseForestsInstanceAutumnYellowAfternoonDeliciousMistressYellow Leaves
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.”

LittlesTwoTogetherRememberFacesThreeMemoriesRoomsWeekBallsRoundsDetailsTunesOccupationYearningTwo WeeksWednesdayEmma
Book:Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners
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“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”

HeartSoulCarrie
Book:The Complete Works of Gustave Flaubert: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Memoirs and Letters: Original Versions of the Novels and Stories in French, An Interactive Bilingual Edition with Literary Essays on Flaubert by Guy de Maupassant, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence
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“She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.”

KindEmotionSeaGrewAdvantageStormRuinsArtisticUselessRejectedSentimentalTemperamentGratificationHere And ThereSceneryVegetationImmediate Gratification
Book:Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life
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“Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.”

Has BeensBookBeautifulPassionImagineExpectedBlissMistakenRaptureEmma
Book:madame bovary
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