694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

...Emma still had a joyless look, and, habitually, at the corners of her mouth, she had that tightness that crumples the faces of old maids and bankrupts.

A man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.

Every notary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.

With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady’s album – and this is always a gallant thing to do, whatever you may say.

Thy chastity is but a more subtle form of corruption, and thy contempt of this world is but the impotence of thy hatred against it.

He remembers with disdain the ignorance of other days, the mediocrity of his dreams. And now those luminous globes he was wont to gaze upon from below are close to him!

 Bouvard thought: 'Ah, progress, what a farce!' He added: 'And politics, what a filthy mess!' 

Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.

Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?