“Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.”
Gustave Flaubert“It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.” ― Gustave Flaubert”
Gustave Flaubert“Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“To return to antiquity [in literature]: that has been done. To return to the Middle Ages: that too has been done. Remains the present day. But the ground is shaky: so where can you set the foundations? An answer to this question must be found if one is to produce anything vital and hence lasting. All this disturbs me so much that I no longer like to be spoken to about it.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“The world is going to become bloody stupid and from now on will be a very boring place. We’re lucky to be living now.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“Alas! It seems to me that when one is as good as this at dissecting children who are to born, one can’t stiffen up enough to create them.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”
Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour