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07082f9
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Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "rapture" - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books."
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marriage
relationships
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Gustave Flaubert |
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59ff95d
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It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn't be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more..
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writing
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Gustave Flaubert |
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be5d175
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Isn't 'not to be bored' one of the principal goals of life?
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life
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Gustave Flaubert |
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4089045
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Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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75879e9
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I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God o..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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1a6f71d
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For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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45e895c
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We think of women at every age: while still children, we fondle with a naive sensuality the breasts of those grown-up girls kissing us and cuddling us in their arms; at the age of ten, we dream of love; at fifteen, love comes along; at sixty, it is still with us, and if dead men in their tombs have any thought in their heads, it is how to make their way underground to the nearby grave, lift the shroud of the dear departed women, and mingle ..
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women
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Gustave Flaubert |
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089ab8c
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Because lascivious or venal lips had murmured the same words to him, he now had little belief in their sincerity when he heard them from Emma; they should be taken with a grain of salt, he thought, because the most exaggerated speeches usually hid the weakest feelings - as though the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow into the emptiest phrases, since no one can ever express the exact measure of his needs, his conceptions, or hi..
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gustave flaubert |
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38d8914
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For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.
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marriage
love
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Gustave Flaubert |
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4220f40
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Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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6053c1f
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She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.
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marriage
boredom
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Gustave Flaubert |
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0584ec5
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The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!
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women
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Gustave Flaubert |
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394a456
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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.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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2245d15
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At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women,..
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nature
fear
hallucinations
goddess
night
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Gustave Flaubert |
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f504d49
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She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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bdcaf1e
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Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.
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humanity
religion
classical
rome
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Gustave Flaubert |
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b5083db
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Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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72a3f77
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To be simple is no small matter.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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d211475
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I detest common heroes and moderate feelings, the sort that exist in real life
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Gustave Flaubert |
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0f83b89
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Love, to her, was something hat comes suddenly, like a blinding flash of lightening - a heaven-sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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980c9f7
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Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ef89f45
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He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ffbed19
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And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.
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love
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Gustave Flaubert |
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fbd39c0
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As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.
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romance
music
love
keyboard
madame-bovary
piano
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ad0b775
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There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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098ab64
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Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.
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literature
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Gustave Flaubert |
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fe99947
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as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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823ad78
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It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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8d24dbc
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But the flames did die down, perhaps from lack, perhaps from excess of fuel. Little by little, love was quenched by absence, and longing smothered by routine; and that fiery glow which tinged her pale sky scarlet grew more clouded, then gradually faded away. Her benumbed consciousness even led her to mistake aversion toward her husband for desire for her loved, the searing touch of hatred for the rekindling of love; but, as the storm still ..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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468efa8
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Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.
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intelligence
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Gustave Flaubert |
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94329cc
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It was the fault of destiny!
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Gustave Flaubert |
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561d494
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Que mejor cosa que estarse por la noche al amor de la lumbre con un libro, mientras el viento pega en los cristales, y arde la lampara...?
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Gustave Flaubert |
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8d686d8
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On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
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creativity
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Gustave Flaubert |
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0e9731e
|
The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.
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love
madame-bovary
quotes
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Gustave Flaubert |
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e2f83c2
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Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex...
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men
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Gustave Flaubert |
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10ff4e7
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In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had always loved church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions and she rebelled before the mysteries of faith just as she grew ever more restive under discipline, which was antipathetic to her nature.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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6823699
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Come, let's be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.
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writing
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Gustave Flaubert |
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55e848e
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Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up t..
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simile
lydia-davis
madame-bovary
translation
waiting
sad
soul
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Gustave Flaubert |
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8573b13
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The hours go by without my knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of--I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters--I live and breathe them.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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7b181ce
|
No era feliz, no lo habia sido nunca. ?De donde venia, pues, aquella insuficiencia, de la vida, aquella instantanea podredumbre de las cosas en que se apoyaba?[...]. Cada sonrisa disimulaba un bostezo de aburrimiento, cada alegria una maldicion, cada placer su propio asco, y los mejores besos no dejaban sobre los labios mas que un delirio irrealizable de una voluptuosidad mas alta.
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insatisfacción
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Gustave Flaubert |
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7cc464a
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By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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4924a07
|
But for the man who watches the leaves trembling in the wind's breath, the rivers meandering through the meadows, life twisting and turning and swirling through things, men living, doing good and evil, the sea rolling its waves and the sky with its expanse of lights, and who asks himself why these leaves are there, why the water flows, why life itself is such a terrible torrent plunging towards the boundless ocean of death in which it will ..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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32463d1
|
Having no intercourse with anyone, she lived in the torpid state of a sleep-walker.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ce21155
|
Every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.
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Gustave Flaubert |