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Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert Quotes

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Famous Gustave Flaubert Quotes

“Didn't love, like a plant from India, require a prepared soil, a particular temperature? Sighs in the moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over hands yielded to a lover, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness thus could not be separated from the balconies of great châteaux filled with idle amusements, a boudoir with silk blinds, a good thick carpet, full of pots of flowers, and a bed raised on a dais, nor from the sparkle of precious stones and shoulder knots on servants' livery.”

LoveLongHandsTearsParticularFlowerLoversBedStonesIndiaFilledEmbracePlantPreparedRaisedFleshShouldersServantSoilPotThickTendernessIdleSighAmusementCarpetMoonlightTemperatureFeverSilkKnotsSparkleBalconiesPrecious StonesBoudoir
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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“[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

NeedsHumansLongSoulSometimesLanguageStarsBearsSorrowTruth IsSpeechRhythmFullnessCrudeCrackedOverflowKettles
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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“Books aren't made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids. There's some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it's back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands there in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.”

WayLongMadeBookPurposePlansBabyStonesBlockDesertEtcComparisonOver ItTowersConsumingBourgeoisPyramidsTime ConsumingJackals
Author:Gustave Flaubert
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