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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 Flaubert

The principal thing in this world is to keep one’s soul aloft.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Humble Principle Soul World
After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Believe Death Difficult Feeling Oneself Person
A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Death Friendship Yourself
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Adventure Modesty Occupy Place Travel World Yourself
My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Imagination Myself Reality
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

Achievement Angry Difficult Lust Wonder
Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Invention Oneself True
Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Art Avoid Horrible Life Live World
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Art Clumsy Occasion Ordinary Reveal World
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Happiness Lost Selfish Stupidity
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Doubt Exhaust Myself
Earth has its boundaries, but human stupidity is limitless.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Boundary Earth Human Limitation Stupidity
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Invention Perfection Poetry Precise True
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.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Challenge Day Feeling Glory Life Moments Promise Rise Success
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.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Discover Forest Harmony Listening Try Waves
Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

History Ignorance Ourselves Time

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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