Gustave Flaubert quote about love from Madame Bovary - For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her.
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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 (1856). copy citation

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

Context

“Later on, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.” source
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