"Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom."
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Quote collection
Gustave Flaubert quotes (page 9 of 15)
299 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living."
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"You don’t make art out of good intentions."
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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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"Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it."
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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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"He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust — dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight."
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"The cult of art gives pride; one never has too much of it."
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"DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)"
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"My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing words, without fear, without compassion, without love, without God. I am called science."
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"Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?"
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"Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart."
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"One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table."
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"I’m dazzled by your facility. In ten days you’ll have written six stories! I don’t understand it… I’m like one of those old aqueducts: there’s so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop."
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"They took each other's advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely."
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"It seems to me... that I have always lived! I possess memories that go back to the Pharoahs. I see myself very clearly at different ages of history, practicing different professions... My present personality is the result of my lost [past] personalities."
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"Tout ce qu'on invente est vrai, soi-en sure. La poesie est une chose aussi precise que la geometrie."
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"She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep."
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"I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests."
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"Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! 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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