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

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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

Meaning and analysis

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