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Quote by Gustave Flaubert

“I had, as I told you, a great passion while still almost a child. When it was over, I divided myself in two, placing on one side the soul I kept for Art, and on the other, my body, which would have to fend for itself.”

Quote by Gustave Flaubert

Author

Gustave Flaubert

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'. more

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“Everything is there: the love of Art.”

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.”

Art Important Artist Certain Order Emotion Quality Sacrifice Illusion Aim Details Poetic Inferiors

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Everything depends on the value we give to things. We are the ones who make morality and virtue. The cannibal who eats his neighbor is as innocent as the child who sucks his barley-sugar.”

Giving Children Values Virtue Depends Morality Neighbor Innocent Sugar Cannibal Barley

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.”

Literature Poor Adventure Flower Phrases Tranquil Poor Life

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

“Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.”

Form Certain Values Games Moral Criticism Regard Lowest Hierarchy Moral Values Rhyming Inventiveness

Book:The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857

“Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.”

Death Infinite Remains Lips Bitterness Infinity Nothingness Erase Foreheads Cadavers

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.”

Feels Wells Sometimes Seems Faces Work Doubt Duty Conscience Profound Satisfaction Following Superiors Emptiness Midst Spontaneous Obeying Ennui Sneer Fatality

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“I do not like to "interest" the public with myself.”

Self Interest Fame

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Mediocrity cherishes rules; as for me, I hate them; I feel for them and for every restriction, corporation, caste, hierarchy, level, herd, a loathing which fills my soul, and it is in this respect perhaps that I understand martyrdom.”

Feels Soul Hate Levels Respect I Hate My Soul Corporations Cherish Conformity Mediocrity Hierarchy Restriction Herds Loathing Martyrdom Castes

Author:Gustave Flaubert