Gustave Flaubert · 230 pages
Rating: (338 votes)
“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, quote from 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, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“Isn’t ‘not to be bored’ one of the principal goals of life?”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“(Egypt) is a great place for contrasts: splendid things gleam in the dust.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“So long as there is gold underneath, who cares about the dust on top? Literature! That old whore! We must try to dose her with mercury and pills and clean her out from top to bottom, she has been so ultra-screwed by filthy pricks!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from 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, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“I have patience in all things – as far as the antechamber.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from 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, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“You ask me whether the Orient is up to what I imagined it to be. Yes, it is; and more than that, it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions - so excellently so that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old forgotten dreams.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“This is indeed a funny country. Yesterday, for example, we were in a cafe which is one of the best in Cairo, and there were, at the same time as ourselves, inside, a donkey shitting, and a gentleman who was pissing in a corner. No one finds that odd; no one says anything.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
Gustave Flaubert
Born place: in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, France
Born date December 12, 1821
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“A quick run past the rabbits' execution shed, a turn around the kittens' quicklime pit, a moment's hesitation beyond the monkeys' gas-chamber--and they are gone: ay, not so long ago these canines fled away into the storm. It would be pleasant to report that that night Dr. Boycott dreamt of many a woe, and all his whitecoat-men with shade and form of witch and demon and large coffin-worm were long be-nightmared. One might even have hoped to add that Tyson the old died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform. But in fact--as will be seen--none of these things happened. Slowly the rain ceased, the grey rack blowing away and over Windermere as first light came creeping into the sky and the remaining inmates of Lawson Park woke to another day in the care and service of humanity.”
― Richard Adams, quote from The Plague Dogs
“Nathaniel first stared at the vampiric Moses and then at the bizarre door. Numerous symbols had been carved deep in the surface and instead of square edges, they were rounded. Daniel then drew a dagger from his coat and proceeded to stand directly in front of the door. As he neared it, one could swear that the surface rippled like oil in a vat while he grazed it with the dagger. Quite suddenly, he jammed the blade in the very center of the door up to the very hilt. A high-pitched grunt followed and then a series of mechanical noises and clangs chimed and clicked until the door skid back two inches and descended into the ground.”
― J.D. Estrada, quote from Only Human
“And there. The power of a word. The power of one word. That's where it all changes.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from Release
“Something stilled the part of him that knitted narrative, that grew the underbrush of lies in which he lived.”
― William Gibson, quote from The Peripheral
“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, quote from The Fellowship of the Ring: The Lord of the Rings Part One
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