Gustave Flaubert Quotes
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.
Gustave Flaubert
(Madame Bovary, 1856)
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1846)
She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1852)
Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1853)
What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Guy de Maupassant, 1880)
For her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
"I suffered a great deal."
He answered philosophically: "Existence is thus!"
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
Each dream finds at last its form;
There is a drink for every thirst, and
Love for every heart.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Elisa Schlesinger, 1857)
It is the fault of fate.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
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.
Gustave Flaubert
The memories of her past life, which till then had always been so clear and definite, vanished so completely in the splendours of the moment that she could hardly persuade herself they were not a dream. There she was.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1846)
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
Gustave Flaubert
Death always brings with it a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it for the human mind to realize and resign itself to the blank and utter nothingness.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to George Sand, 1866)
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
Gustave Flaubert
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Ernest Chevalier, 1842)
Why was life so unsatisfactory? Why did everything she leaned on crumble instantly to dust?
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
Then there was silence. They looked at each other, and their thoughts, mingling in the same anguish of mind, clung closely to one another like two throbbing bosoms.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does—that is, fill us with wonderment.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1853)
Nothing specific stood out against the vast background of the future that she thus evoked: the days were all of them splendid, and as alike as the waves of the sea; and the whole thing hovered on the horizon, infinite, harmonious, blue and sparkling in the sun.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
Everywhere was silence; a sweetness seemed to exhale from the trees. She could feel her heart as it began to beat anew, she could feel the blood suffusing her whole body like a stream of milk. And then, far, far away, beyond the wood on the hills across the valley, she heard a cry, vague and prolonged, a voice that lingered on the air, and she listened to it in silence, mingling like music with the last vibrations of her throbbing nerves.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
How happy she had been in those days! How free! How full of hope! How rich in illusions! There were no illusions left now. She had had to part with some each time she had ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions -- as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
Deep down in her heart, she was waiting and waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked mariner, she gazed out wistfully over the wide solitude of her life, if so be she might catch the white gleam of a sail away on the dim horizon. She knew not what it would be, this longed-for barque; what wind would waft it to her, or to what shores it would bear her away. She knew not if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, burdened with anguish or freighted with joy. But every morning when she awoke she hoped it would come that day. She listened to every sound, started swiftly from her bed, and could not understand why nothing happened. And then at sunset, more sad at heart than ever, she would long for the morrow to come.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
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.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1852)
For some men, the stronger their desire, the more difficult it is for them to act. They are hampered by mistrust of themselves, daunted by the fear of giving offence; besides, deep feelings of affection are like respectable women; they are afraid of being found out and they go through life with downcast eyes.
Gustave Flaubert (Sentimental Education, 1869)
At last she was going to know the joys of love, the fever of the happiness she had despaired of. She was entering a marvelous realm where all would be passion, ecstasy, rapture: she was in the midst of an endless blue expanse, scaling the glittering heights of passion; everyday life had receded, and lay far below, in the shadows between those peaks.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
Evening shadows were falling; the sun’s rays, streaming horizontally through the branches, dazzled her eyes. Here and there, all around her, among the leaves and on the ground, were shimmering patches of light, as though hummingbirds had scattered their feathers in flight. Silence lay over everything; the trees seemed to be giving off something soft and sweet; she felt her heart beating again, and the blood flowing through her flesh like a river of milk. Then she heard a long, lingering, indistinct cry coming from one of the hills far beyond the forest; she listened to it in silence as it mingled like a strain of music with the last vibrations of her overwrought nerves.
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary, 1856)
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (Letter to Louise Colet, 1846)
