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Madame Bovary quotes

Gustave Flaubert

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“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied her more than great debauchery.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself?” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“But she—her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“She only wished to lean on something more solid than love.” Gustave Flaubert, 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.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Ah! by Jove! one’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented?” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing!” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

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passion love science happiness death admiration solitude heart courage art desire confusion instant conventions cowardice secret hurricane life mistress men

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Gustave Flaubert quotes