"Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world."
"What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures."
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Source: Gustave Flaubert (1993). “Madame Bovary: Patterns of Provincial Life”, Everyman's Library
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