Gustave Flaubert quote about courage from Madame Bovary - Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.

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“ Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage. ”
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856). copy citation

Author	Gustave Flaubert
Source	Madame Bovary
Topic	courage secret insecurity
Date	1856
Language	English
Reference
Note	Translated by Eleanor Marx-Aveling
Weblink	http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2413/2413-h/2413-h.htm

Context

“Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand.” source

Original quote

“Peut-être aurait-elle souhaité faire à quelqu'un la confidence de toutes ces choses. Mais comment dire un insaisissable malaise, qui change d'aspect comme les nuées, qui tourbillonne comme le vent ? Les mots lui manquaient donc, l'occasion,...” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary