694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level.

The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.

What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul’s life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love – thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road.

His heart was flooded with immense love, and as he gazed on her he could feel his mind growing numb.

Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.

Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom.

My soul has been haunted by something like those forgotten melodies that come back to us at twilight, during those slow hours in which memory, like a ghost among ruins, stalks our thoughts.

Tutto finisce, tutto passa, l’acqua scorre e il cuore dimentica.

Madame Aubain’s servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l’Eveque for half a century.