"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
"If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim."
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Source: Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmüller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, Belknap Press
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"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."
"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."
"I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings."
"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."
"It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs."