"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
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Quote collection
Gustave Flaubert quotes (page 1 of 15)
299 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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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"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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"I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings."
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"It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs."
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"I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports.... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them."
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"Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant."
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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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"A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier."
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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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"Since you are now studying geometry and trigonometry, I will give you a problem. A ship sails the ocean. It left Boston with a cargo of wool. It grosses 200 tons. It is bound for Le Havre. The mainmast is broken, the cabin boy is on deck, there are 12 passengers aboard, the wind is blowing East-North-East, the clock points to a quarter past three in the afternoon. It is the month of May. How old is the captain?"
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"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"
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"In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on."
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"Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins."
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"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."
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"Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion."
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"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois."
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"I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them."
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"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
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"I spent the morning putting in a comma and the afternoon removing it."
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