Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERTThrough small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.
More Gustave Flaubert Quotes
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She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
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Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
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The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
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My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
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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.
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I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it.
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The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.
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It’s a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.
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The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
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I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.
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It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
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One’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
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For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
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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.
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The most important thing in the world is to hold your soul aloft.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT -
Read in order to live.
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Life must be a constant education; one must learn everything, from speaking to dying.
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One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
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The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
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Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.
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Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
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Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.
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I have dreamed much and have done very little.
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To be simple is no small matter.
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What a heavy oar the pen is, and what a strong current ideas are to row in!
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Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT