Quotes from Sentimental Education

“It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go to a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Never had he beheld such a magnificent brown skin, so entrancing a figure, such dainty, transparent fingers. He stood gazing in wonder at her work-basket as if it was something extraordinary. What was her name? Where did she live and what sort of life did she lead? What was her past? He wanted to know what furniture she had in her bedroom, the dresses she wore, the people she knew; even his physical desire for her gave way to a deeper yearning, a boundless, aching curiosity.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“His heart was flooded with immense love, and as he gazed on her he could feel his mind growing numb.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“I'm the sort of man who's doomed to be a failure and I'll go to my grave without ever knowing whether I was real gold or just tinsel!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Les cœurs des femmes sont comme ces petits meubles à secret, pleins de tiroirs emboîtés les uns dans les autres ; on se donne du mal, on se casse les ongles, et on trouve au fond quelque fleur desséchée, des brins de poussière – ou le vide !”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Pellerin used to read every available book on aesthetics, in the hope of discovering the true theory of Beauty, for he was convinced that once he had found it he would be able to paint masterpieces.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“The hearts of women are like little pieces of furniture wherein things are secreted, full of drawers fitted into each other; one hurts himself, breaks his nails in opening them, and then finds within only some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness! And then perhaps he felt afraid of learning too much about the matter.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“En plongeant dans la personnalité des autres, il oublia la sienne, ce qui est la seule manière peut-être de n'en pas souffrir.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Besides, she had just reached the autumnal period of womanhood, in which reflection is combined with tenderness, in which the beginning of maturity colours the face with a more intense flame, when strength of feeling mingles with experience of life, and when, having completely expanded, the entire being overflows with a richness in unison with its beauty. Never had she possessed more sweetness, more leniency. Secure in the thought that she would not err, she abandoned herself to a sentiment which seemed to her justified by her sorrows. And, moreover, it was so innocent and fresh! What an abyss lay between the coarseness of Arnoux and the adoration of Frederick!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Cheer up,' said the captain's son. 'Life is long, and we are young.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“As there was no rational foundation for Frederick’s complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any real misfortune, Martinon was unable to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this work-woman, he felt perfectly happy.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Standing side by side, on some rising ground, they felt, as they drank in the air, the pride of a life more free penetrating into the depths of their souls, with a superabundance of energy, a joy which they could not explain.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“L'action, pour certains hommes, est d'autant plus impraticable que le désir est plus fort. La méfiance d'eux-mêmes les embarrasse, la crainte de déplaire les épouvante; d’ailleurs, les affections profondes ressemblent aux honnêtes femmes; elles ont peur d’être découvertes, et passent dans la vie les yeux baissés.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Il voulait qu'elle se donnât, et non la prendre.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Des doutes succédaient à leurs emportements d'espoir. Après des crises de gaieté verbeuse, ils tombaient dans des silences profonds.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Deslauriers, qui couchait dans le cabinet au bois, près de la fontaine, poussait un long bâillement. Frédéric s'asseyait au pied de son lit. D'abord il parlait du dîner, puis il racontait mille détails insignifiants, où il voyait des marques de mépris ou d'affection. Une fois, par exemple, elle avait refusé son bras, pour prendre celui de Dittmer, et Frédéric se désolait.
- Ah ! quelle bêtise!
Ou bien elle l'avait appelé son "ami".
- Vas-y gaiement, alors!
- Mais je n'ose pas, disait Frédéric.
- Eh bien, n'y pense plus. Bonsoir.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Anyway, what was the use? Women's hearts were like those desks full of secret drawers that fit one inside another; you struggle with them, you break your fingernails, and at the bottom you find a withered flower, a little dust, or nothing at all!”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“I zamišljali su život predan jedino ljubavi, dosta plodan da ispuni najopsežnije samoće, prevrši sve radosti, odoli svim nevoljama, u kojem bi ure minule u neprestanom prelijevanju njihovih duša; život, koji bi stvorio nešto sjajno i uzvišeno kao što je titranje zvijezda.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“  Frédéric n'aima point cette manière de s'associer, tout de suite, à sa fortune. Son ami témoignait trop de joie pour eux deux, et pas assez pour lui seul.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Laissez-moi tranquille avec votre hideuse réalité ! Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire, la réalité ? Les uns voient noir, d'autres bleu, la multitude voit bête. Rien de moins naturel que Michel-Ange, rien de plus fort ! Le souci de la vérité extérieure dénote la bassesse contemporaine ; et l'art deviendra, si l'on continue, je ne sais quelle rocambole au-dessous de la religion comme poésie, et de la politique comme intérêt. Vous n'arriverez pas à son but, - oui, son but ! -”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Les Grecs alignèrent sur des rangs parallèles leurs tentes de peaux; les Ibériens disposèrent en cercle leurs pavillons de toile; les Gaulois se firent des baraques de planches; les Libyens des cabanes de pierres sèches, et les Nègres creusèrent dans le sable avec leurs ongles des fosses pour dormir. Beaucoup, ne sachant où se mettre, erraient au milieu des bagages [...]”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Se lăuda că își cunoaște limba și purica cele mai frumoase fraze cu acea severitate haină, acel gust academic care caracterizează persoanele zvăpăiate cînd se ocupă de arta serioasă./
Il se vantait de savoir sa langue et épluchait les phrases les plus belles avec cette sévérité hargneuse, ce goût académique qui distinguent les personnes d’humeur folâtre quand elles abordent l’art sérieux. (©BeQ)”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“Frédéric se așteptase să fie zguduit de bucurie; dar sentimentele slăbesc cînd le schimbi locul și, nemaigăsind-o pe doamna Arnoux în mediul în care o cunoscuse, îi părea că pierduse ceva, că purta în ea, nelămurit, un fel de degradare, că, în sfîrșit, nu mai era aceeași. Liniștea inimii lui îl uluia./
Frédéric s’était attendu à des spasmes de joie; mais les passions s’étiolent quand on les dépayse, et, ne retrouvant plus Mme Arnoux dans le milieu où il l’avait connue, elle lui semblait avoir perdu quelque chose, porter confusément comme une dégradation, enfin n’être pas la même. Le calme de son coeur le stupéfiait. (©BeQ)”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

“... camaraderia lor era o piedică pentru manifestarea oricărei emoții serioase./
... leur camaraderie faisait obstacle à l’épanchement de toute émotion sérieuse. (©BeQ)”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Sentimental Education

About the author

Popular quotes

“[The Bible] has to be interpreted. And if it isn’t interpreted, then it can’t be put into action. So if we are serious about following God, then we have to interpret the Bible. It is not possible to simply do what the Bible says. We must first make decisions about what it means at this time, in this place, for these people.”
― Rob Bell, quote from Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

“Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Loser

“When I first read The Rebel, this splendid line came leaping from the page like a dolphin from a wave. I memorized it instantly, and from then on Camus was my man. I wanted to write like that, in a prose that sang like poetry. I wanted to look like him. I wanted to wear a Bogart-style trench coat with the collar turned up, have an untipped Gauloise dangling from my lower lip, and die romantically in a car crash. At the time, the crash had only just happened. The wheels of the wrecked Facel Vega were practically still spinning, and at Sydney University I knew exiled French students, spiritually scarred by service in Indochina, who had met Camus in Paris: one of them claimed to have shared a girl with him. Later on, in London, I was able to arrange the trench coat and the Gauloise, although I decided to forgo the car crash until a more propitious moment. Much later, long after having realized that smoking French cigarettes was just an expensive way of inhaling nationalized industrial waste, I learned from Olivier Todd's excellent biography of Camus that the trench coat had been a gift from Arthur Koestler's wife and that the Bogart connection had been, as the academics say, no accident. Camus had wanted to look like Bogart, and Mrs. Koestler knew where to get the kit. Camus was a bit of an actor--he though, in fact, that he was a lot of an actor, although his histrionic talent was the weakest item of his theatrical equipment--and, being a bit of an actor, he was preoccupied by questions of authenticity, as truly authentic people seldom are. But under the posturing agonies about authenticity there was something better than authentic: there was something genuine. He was genuinely poetic. Being that, he could apply two tests simultaneously to his own language: the test of expressiveness, and the test of truth to life. To put it another way, he couldn't not apply them.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“will drip from your own bones before”
― Tim LaHaye, quote from Apollyon

“There were always people who struggled their way to the top of the heap, no matter how much that heap looked like garbage when seen from the outside.”
― Michelle Sagara, quote from Cast in Silence

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.