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6ee5324
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While there's life there's hope.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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a3eacc4
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One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
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life
rodolphe
unconventional
madame-bovary
conventions
gustave-flaubert
duty
society
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Gustave Flaubert |
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7a3e12e
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But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.
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lovers
love
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Gustave Flaubert |
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e6cf360
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When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds - like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.
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poets
writing
work
writers
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Gustave Flaubert |
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a5c7c1c
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Je ne suis pas plus moderne qu'ancien, pas plus Francais que Chinois, et l'idee de la patrie c'est-a-dire l'obligation ou l'on est de vivre sur un coin de terre marque en rouge ou en bleu sur la carte et de detester les autres coins en vert ou en noir m'a paru toujours etroite, bornee et d'une stupidite feroce.
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patrie
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Gustave Flaubert |
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d8cb708
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So long as there is gold underneath, who cares about the dust on top? Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!
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Gustave Flaubert |
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6ed7a39
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If there is on earth, and among all these things of nothing, a belief worthy of adoration, if there is anything holy, pure and sublime, anything answering that immoderate desire for the infinite and the vague that we call the soul, it is art.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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eae9c98
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Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. A man,..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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9da6b94
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Love, she felt, ought to come all at once, with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning; it was like a storm bursting upon life from the sky, uprooting it, overwhelming the will, and sweeping the heart into the abyss. It did not occur to her that rain forms puddles on a flat roof when the drainpipes are clogged, and she would have continued to feel secure if she had not suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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a08d23d
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Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!
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Gustave Flaubert |
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494feba
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Oh, if somewhere there were a being strong and handsome, a valiant heart, passionate and sensitive at once, a poet's spirit in an angel's form, a lyre with strings of steel, sounding sweet-sad epithalamiums to the heavens, then why should she not find that being?
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Gustave Flaubert |
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35aa81f
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Financial demands, of all the rough winds that blow upon our love, (are) quite the coldest and the most biting.
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money
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Gustave Flaubert |
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a57039a
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Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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f4522dd
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This haze of blood must subside, the palace must collapse under the weight of the riches it conceals, the orgy must finish and the time come to awaken.
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ending
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Gustave Flaubert |
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8f6772f
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But she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.
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dissatisfaction
restlessness
discontent
frustration
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Gustave Flaubert |
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140a51e
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There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more
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writing
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Gustave Flaubert |
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79fc3d6
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Beautiful things spoil nothing.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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747c508
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La conversation de Charles etait plate comme un trottoir de rue, et les idees de tout le monde y defilaient dans leur costume ordinaire, sans exciter d'emotion, de rire ou de reverie
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Gustave Flaubert |
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8146870
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Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
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sentiment
ideas
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Gustave Flaubert |
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5a3a7d8
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I love the autumn--that melancholy season that suits memories so well. When the trees have lost their leaves, when the sky at sunset still preserves the russet hue that fills with gold the withered grass, it is sweet to watch the final fading of the fires that until recently burnt within you.
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fall
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Gustave Flaubert |
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39b98e2
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How oft the warmth of the sun above Makes a pretty young girl dream of love.
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idealism
icarus
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gustave flaubert |
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a2922c9
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Why was it? Who drove you to it?' She replied, 'It had to be, my dear!' 'Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!' 'Yes, that is true -- you are good -- you.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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44ab4a2
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At last she sighed. "But the most wretched thing -- is it not? -- is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice."
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suffering
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Gustave Flaubert |
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95f9e30
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Charles went to kiss her shoulder. -Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.
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kiss
poor-old-charles-bovary
shoulder
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Gustave Flaubert |
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97ac62b
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Never had he beheld such a magnificent brown skin, so entrancing a figure, such dainty, transparent fingers. He stood gazing in wonder at her work-basket as if it was something extraordinary. What was her name? Where did she live and what sort of life did she lead? What was her past? He wanted to know what furniture she had in her bedroom, the dresses she wore, the people she knew; even his physical desire for her gave way to a deeper yearn..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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4617c68
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But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then pride, the joy of being able to say to herself 'I am virtuous', and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little..
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Gustave Flaubert |
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cf58000
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He leaned against the writing desk and stayed there till nightfall, lost in sorrowful thoughts. After all, she had loved him.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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c417f0f
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But what was making her unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that had wrecked her life?She raised her head and looked around, as though trying to find the cause of her suffering.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ed08d21
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There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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d5e5291
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Chaque sourire cachait un baillement d'ennui, chaque joie une malediction, tout plaisir son degout, et les meilleurs baisers ne vous laissaient sur la levre qu'une irrealisable envie d'une volupte plus haute.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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df66538
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Il s'etait tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu'elles n'avaient pour lui rien d'original. Emma ressemblait a toutes les maitresses ; et le charme de la nouveaute, peu a peu tombant comme un vetement, laissait voir a nu l'eternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les memes formes et le meme langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parite des expressions. Parce que des ..
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love
madame-bovary
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Gustave Flaubert |
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50d2211
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Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage.
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melancholy
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Gustave Flaubert |
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66cceee
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H]e was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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6aaabf5
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But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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7d1eb69
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The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.
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history
ruins
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Gustave Flaubert |
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767c607
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His wife had been wild about him at first; she had treated him with an amorous servility that had turned him against her all the more. Vivacious, effusive, and very loving in the early days, over the years she had, like a stale wine that turns to vinegar, grown ill-humoured, waspish, and nervy.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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c7de77c
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Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.
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speech
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Gustave Flaubert |
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c3db698
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Everyone rushes wherever his instincts impel him, the populace swarms like insects over a corpse, poets pass by without having the time to sculpt their thoughts, hardly have they scribbled their ideas down on sheets of paper than the sheets are blown away; everything glitters and everything resounds in this masquerade, beneath its ephemeral royalties and its cardboard scepters, gold flows, wine cascades, cold debauchery lifts her skirts and..
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society
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Gustave Flaubert |
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1e88ee0
|
An overwhelming curiosity makes me ask myself what their lives might be like. I want to know what they do, where they're from, their names, what they're thinking about at that moment, what they regret, what they hope for, their past loves, their current dreams ... and if they happen to be women (especially the young ones) then the urge becomes intense.
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women
love
strangers
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Gustave Flaubert |
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2180f9a
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Her great desire, in fact, was to have something more solid, more tangible than love to rely upon.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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30e10b6
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Love, she believed, must come suddenly, with great thunderclaps and bolts of lightening - a hurricane from heaven that drops down on your life, overturns it, tears away your will like a leaf, and carries your whole heart with it off into the abyss.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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0e36fe3
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A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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375fae1
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Remembering the ball became for Emma a daily occupation. Every time Wednesday came round, she told herself when she woke up: 'Ah! One week ago...two weeks ago...three weeks ago, I was there!' And, little by little, in her memory, the faces all blurred together; she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles; no longer could she so clearly picture the liveries and the rooms; some details disappeared, but the yearning remained.
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Gustave Flaubert |
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ef8263e
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Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart.
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sorrow
heaviness
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Gustave Flaubert |