694 Quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They’re a refuge from life’s disillusionments.

And indeed, what is better than to sit by one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is buring?

Have you ever had the experience of finding in a book some vague idea that’s already occurred to you, some obscure image that comes back to you from the depths of your mind, or a perfect expression of your most subtle feelings?

She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die.

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

I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker’s head if they’re not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it’s bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God’s face when it’s bitter.

Mi amistad es como los camellos. En cuanto se pone en marcha ya no hay modo de detenerla.

Coming delights, like tropical beaches, send out their native enchantment over the vast spaces that precede them – a perfumed breeze that lulls and drugs you out of all anxiety as to what may yet await you below the horizon.

They took each other’s advice, opened one book, went over to another, then did not know what to decide when opinions diverged so widely.