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Gustave Flaubert Quotes

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Gustave Flaubert, born on December 12, 1821 and died on May 8, 1880, was a prominent French writer of the 19th century. Known for his exquisite literary skills and profound psychological portrayals, Flaubert is best remembered for his masterpiece 'Madame Bovary'.

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Famous Gustave Flaubert Quotes

“She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.”

Love Heart Beautiful Desire Emotion Beauty Sad Selfish Lust Useless True Sentimental

Book:madame bovary

Source: madame bovary

“In any case, is a man’s heart not a vast solitude where no one else ever ventures? The passions that penetrate it are like travellers in the Sahara Desert: they are stifled and die, and their cries are not heard beyond its confines”.”

Heart Passion

Book:November

Source: November

“Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say—a weight here, at one's heart.”

Heart Sorrow Heaviness

Book:madame bovary

Source: madame bovary

“Each dream finds at last its form; there is a drink for every thirst, and love for every heart. And there is no better way to spend your life than in the unceasing preoccupation of an idea--of an ideal.”

Way Heart Art Ideas Dream Lasts Form Artist Drink Ideals And Love Thirst Idealism Better Ways Preoccupation

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“The style, which is something I take to heart, is getting on my nerves horribly. It frustrates and torments me. I have days when Iam sick about it and nights when it gives me a fever. The more I go at it the more I find myself incapable of conveying the Idea.”

Giving Heart Ideas Night Suffering Literature Work Style Sick Give Me Nerves Incapable Torment Fever Conveying

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes.”

Ifs Heart Character Stories Seems Courses Hours Forget Century Caught Details Following Chairs Plot Slips Caught Up Costumes Forget Everything Heart Beating

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”

Heart Seems Fall My Heart Walking Rain Winter Ruins Evening Sunshine Misty Winter Season Winter Morning

Book:November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style

Source: November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style

“You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything”

Needs Heart Bigs Degrees Criticism Corruption Big Heart

Book:November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style

Source: November: Fragments in a Nondescript Style

“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”

Heart Whole Fall Sky Roots Lightning Leafs Abyss Hurricanes Outburst

Book:Greatest Works of Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary, Senitmental Education, November, A Simple Heart, Herodias and more

Source: Greatest Works of Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary, Senitmental Education, November, A Simple Heart, Herodias and more

“As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.”

Heart Certain Grows Break Tree Tears Wind Spring Storm Branches Each Day Shed Back Again Greenery Break Off

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“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.”

People Heart Certain Amount Bored Indifference Breasts Vibrations Subtlety Emma Drowsy

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!”

Heart Littles Secret Break Pieces Trouble Flower Bottom Dust Emptiness Hiding Grain Nails Furniture Drawers Withered Hiding Place

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.”

Heart Pain Empty Disappointment Identical Succession

Book:Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners

Source: Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners

“Only three things are infinite. The sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.”

Heart Three Stars Water Sea Sky Tears Infinite Memorable Unrequited Love Three Things Unrequited Drop Of Water

Book:The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”

Heart Soul Carrie

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

Source: 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

“Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.”

Years Heart Idleness Inertia

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!”

Heart Lines Empty Identical Procession

Book:Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

Source: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

“Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.”

Heart Darkness Blessing Silent Corners Boredom Spiders Spinning

Book:Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.”