Gustave Flaubert

He dreamed of funeral love, but dreams crumble and the tomb abides

I am alone on this road strewn with bones and bordered by ruins! Angels have their brothers, and demons have their infernal companions. Yet I have but the sound of my scythe when it harvests, my whistling arrows, my galloping horse. Always the sound of the same wave eating away at the world

How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.

Some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

And on the endless dusty ribbon of the highway, on sunken roads vaulted over by branches, on paths between stands of grain that rose to his knees, the sun on his shoulders and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the night's bliss, his spirit at peace and his flesh content, he would ride on his way ruminating his happiness, like someone who keeps savoring, hours later, the fragrance of the truffles he has eaten for dinner.

Charles went to kiss her shoulder.-Leave me alone! she said, you're creasing my dress.

I have patience in all things _ as far as the antechamber.

Talent is a long patience, and originality an effort of will and intense observation.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

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. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.

Judge the goodness of a book by the energy of the punches it has given you. I believe the greatest characteristic of genius, is, above all, force.

Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?

Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.

Idols must never be touched: the gilt will come off on our hands.

As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.

But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.

He had the vanity to believe men did not like him _ while men simply did not know him.