Gustave Flaubert

“Izgledalo joj je da poneka mesta na zemlji sama po sebi stvaraju sreću, kao što neka biljka uspeva na jednom zemljištu, a na drugom ne.”

“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.”

“Il citait du latin, tant il était exaspéré.”

“Antes de casarse, Emma se había creído enamorada; pero como la felicidad que hubiera debido resultar de aquel amor no había llegado, pensó que necesariamente debía de haberse equivocado. Y trataba de averiguar qué significaban exactamente en la vida las palabras 'dicha', 'pasión' y 'embriaguez', que tan hermosas le habían parecido en los libros”

“The man is nothing, the work--all.”

“Non leggete, come fanno i bambini, per divertirvi, o, come fanno gli ambiziosi per istruirvi. No, leggete per vivere.”

“I lead a bitter life, devoid of all external joy and in which I have nothing to keep me going but a sort of permanent rage, which weeps at times from impotence, but which is constant.”

“She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.”

“Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.”

“She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague “she” of all the poetry books.”

“For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.”

“If there is on earth, and among all these things of nothing, a belief worthy of adoration, if there is anything holy, pure and sublime, anything answering that immoderate desire for the infinite and the vague that we call the soul, it is art.”

“One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.”

“It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts.”

“So far as Emma was concerned she did not ask herself whether she was in love. Love, she thought, was something that must come suddenly, with a great display of thunder and lightning, descending on one's life like a tempest from above, turning it topsy-turvy, whirling away one's resolutions like leaves and bearing one onward, heart and soul, towards the abyss. She never bethought herself how on the terrace of a house the rain forms itself into little lakes when the gutters are choked, and she was going on quite unaware of her peril, when all of a sudden she discovered--a crack in the wall!”

“[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

“Spiritul acesta, pozitiv în mijlocul exaltărilor sale, care iubise biserica pentru florile ei, muzica pentru cuvintele romanţelor, literatura pentru aţâţările ei pasionale, se răzvrătea în faţa misterelor credinţei, după cum se îndârjea şi mai aprig împotriva disciplinei de nesuportat pentru firea ei.”

“Accustomed to the calm aspects of things, she turned, instead, toward the more tumultuous. She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed to derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart, — being by temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions and not landscapes.”

“Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.”

“It seemed to her that certain parts of the world must produce happiness as they produced peculiar plants which will flourish nowhere else.”

“Charles’ conversation was as flat as a street pavement, on which everybody’s ideas trudged past, in their workaday dress, provoking no emotion, no laughter, no dreams.”

“No one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity.”

“She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was scattered among ruins.”

“He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.”

“My novel is the rock to which I cling and I know nothing of what is taking place in the world.”

“It was the fault of destiny!”

“… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!”

“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.”

“Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his despair, and that was boudless, because it was now unrealisable.To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.”

“When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done."But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny."Stand up," said the teacher.He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh.He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again."Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.”

“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.”

“I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.”

“But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then pride, the joy of being able to say to herself 'I am virtuous', and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making.”

“Leur manière de vivre - qui n'était pas celle des autres - déplaisait. Ils devinrent suspects; et même inspiraient une vague terreur.”

“Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.”

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

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

“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.”

“Ainsi leur rencontre avait eu l'importance d'une aventure. Ils s'étaient, tout de suite, accrochés par des fibres secrètes. D'ailleurs, comment expliquer les sympathies? Pourquoi telle particularité, telle imperfection indifférente ou odieuse dans celui-ci enchante-t-elle dans celui-là? Ce qu'on appelle le coup de foudre est vrai pour toutes les passions. Avant la fin de la semaine, ils se tutoyèrent”

“Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.”

“Through the forest he pursued the she-monster whose tail coiled over the dead leaves like a silver stream; and he came to a meadow where women, with the hindquarters of dragons, stood around a great fire, raised on the tips of their tails. The moon shone red as blood in a pale circle and their scarlet tongues, formed like fishing harpoons, stretched out, curling to the edge of the flame.”

“Had they nothing else to say to each other? Yet their eyes were full of more serious statements; and while they sought for commonplace sentences, they each felt the same languor. It was like a murmur of the soul, profound and continuous, dominating that of the voices. Surprised at this unexpected sweetness, it did not occur to them to discuss the sensation or discover the cause. Future happiness, like tropical shores, projects over the vastness that precedes it, its innate indolence, and wafts a scented breeze that intoxicates and dispels any anxiety about the unseen horizon.”

“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.”

“Il s’était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu’elles n’avaient pour lui rien d’original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses ; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l’éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parité des expressions. Parce que des lèvres libertines ou vénales lui avaient murmuré des phrases pareilles, il ne croyait que faiblement à la candeur de celles-là ; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres ; comme si la plénitude de l’âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque personne, jamais, ne peut donner l’exacte mesure de ses besoins, ni de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.”

“C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar.”

“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 !”

“Chaque sourire cachait un bâillement d'ennui, chaque joie une malédiction, tout plaisir son dégoût, et les meilleurs baisers ne vous laissaient sur la lèvre qu'une irréalisable envie d'une volupté plus haute.”

“...as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.”

“Szeretett volna nem élni vagy mindig aludni.”

“Az a kötelességünk, hogy ráérezzünk arra, ami magasrendű, imádjuk azt, ami szép, nem pedig hogy elfogadjunk minden társadalmi konvenciót azzal a sok gyalázatos dologgal együtt, amit ránk kényszerítenek.”