694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.

I detest my fellow-beings and do not feel that I am their fellow at all

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.

By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

Emma was no asleep, she was pretending to be asleep; and, while he was dozing off at her side, she lay awake, dreaming other dreams.

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe" le o u' nous battons des me lodies a' faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.