694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

... et l'ennui, araignée silencieuse, filait sa toile dans l'ombre, à tous les coins de son coeur.

Are you not tired as I am of waking up every morning and seeing the sun all over again? Tired of living the same life, suffering the same sorrow? Tired of desiring, and tired of being sated? Tired of waiting, and tired of possessing?

The countryside stretched flat as far as the eye could see; and the tufts of trees clustered around the farmhouses were widely spaced dark purple stains on the vast grey surface that merged at the horizon into the dull tone of the sky.

It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.

As a child I loved what can be seen, as a teenager what can be felt, as a man I no longer love anything.

As a child I dreamt of love—as a young man of fame—as a man, of the tomb, that last love of those who have no love left.

For you have doubtless done as I did at the age of fifteen, you have once thought you were in love with that burning and frenzied love of the kind you've seen in books, whereas all you were suffering from was just a slight scratch on the epidermis of your heart left by that iron claw called passion, and you were blowing with all the strength of your imagination on that modest fire that was barely even alight.

I live absolutely like an oyster.

... sentimentele slăbesc cînd le schimbi locul.../ Frédéric s’était attendu à des spasmes de joie ; mais les passions s’étiolent quand on les dépayse, et, ne retrouvant plus Mme Arnoux dans le milieu où il l’avait connue, elle lui semblait avoir perdu quelque chose, porter confusément comme une dégradation, enfin n’être pas la même. Le calme de son coeur le stupéfiait. (©BeQ)