Gustave Flaubert Quotes

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

Gustave Flaubert

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

The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.

Gustave Flaubert

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.

Gustave Flaubert

In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don’t see what use he is.

Gustave Flaubert