The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding – places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust – or emptiness!

— Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert Quotes

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered.

— Gustave Flaubert

ABSINTHE – Extra-violent poison: one glass and you are dead. Journalists drink it while writing their articles. Has killed more soldiers than the Bedouins.

— Gustave Flaubert

AMBITION – Always preceded by “mad” when it lacks nobility.

— Gustave Flaubert

ART – Leads to the poorhouse. What’s the use of it, since we’re replacing it with machines that do better and work faster?

— Gustave Flaubert

Argent. Cause de tout le mal.

— Gustave Flaubert

L’argent ne fait pas le bonheur.

— Gustave Flaubert

BALLOONS – With balloons we will end up going to the moon. We shan’t be able to navigate them any time soon.

— Gustave Flaubert

Darwin. Celui qui dit que nous descendons du singe.

— Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes your words come back to me like a distant echo, like the sound of a bell carried by the wind, and when I read love passages in. books, it seems to me that it is you about whom I am reading.

— Gustave Flaubert

Then, the anxiety occasioned by her change of state, or perhaps a certain agitation caused by the presence of this man had sufficed to make her believe herself possessed at last of that wonderful passion which hitherto had hovered above her like a great bird of rosy plumage in the splendor of a poetic heaven... But she could hardly persuade herself that the quietness of her present life was the happiness of her dreams.

— Gustave Flaubert

Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

— Gustave Flaubert

Whereas a man, surely, should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activities, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its grace, initiate you into all mysteries! But this one had nothing to teach; knew nothing, wanted nothing.

— Gustave Flaubert

She had purchased for herself a blotting-case, stationery, a penholder and some envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she wiped the dust off her shelves, looked at herself in the mirror, took down a book, then, dreaming between the lines, let it fall in her lap. She had a desire to travel, or to go back and live at her convent. She wished both to die and to live in Paris.

— Gustave Flaubert

The reminiscences, far too numerous, on which he dwelt produced a disheartening effect on him; he went no further with the work, and his mental vacuity redoubled.

— Gustave Flaubert

Estomac. Toutes les maladies viennent de l’estomac6.

— Gustave Flaubert

There was a diabolical effrontery in her fiery eyes, the heavy eyelids that drooped suggestively, persuasively, and the young man felt himself weakening beneath the silent willpower of this woman who was asking him to commit a crime.

— Gustave Flaubert

Instead of getting drunk at the public, you’d do better to die yourself.

— Gustave Flaubert

Why could she not lean on the balcony of a Swiss chalet or confine her sadness in a Scottish cottage, with a husband dressed in a long-skirted coat of black velvet, and sporting soft boots, a pointed hat and ruffled sleeves! Well may it have been her wish to confide all these things to someone. But how to express an indiscernible disquiet, which alters its shape like the clouds, which whirls like the wind? So she could not find the words, the opportunity, the boldness.

— Gustave Flaubert

Elle aurait voulu ne plus vivre, ou continuellement dormir.

— Gustave Flaubert

For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.

— Gustave Flaubert
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