Sentimental Education Quotes

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

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

“While there's life there's hope.”
― Gustave Flaubert, 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, 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, Sentimental Education

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

“I'd like to be in love like this description, wouldn't you?

...they moved among the carriages, the crowds, the noise, oblivious of everything but themselves, hearing nothing, as if they had been walking together in the country on a bed of dead leaves.”
― Gustave Flaubert, A 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, 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, 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, Sentimental Education

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

“A man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“Chaque soir, quand sa besogne était finie, il regagnait sa mansarde, et il cherchait dans les livres de quoi justifier ses rêves.”
― Gustave Flaubert, L'éducation sentimentale

“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, Sentimental Education

“Another thirst had come to him—the thirst for women, for licentious pleasure, and all that Parisian life permitted him to enjoy. He felt somewhat stunned, like a man coming out of a ship, and in the visions that haunted his first sleep, he saw the shoulders of the fishwife, the loins of the 'longshorewoman, the calves of the Polish lady, and the head-dress of the female savage flying past him and coming back again continually. Then, two large black eyes, which had not been at the ball, appeared before him; and, light as butterflies, burning as torches, they came and went, ascended to the cornice and descended to his very mouth.

Frederick made desperate efforts to recognise those eyes, without succeeding in doing so. But already the dream had taken hold of him. It seemed to him that he was yoked beside Arnoux to the pole of a hackney-coach, and that the Maréchale, astride of him, was disembowelling him with her gold spurs.(©Project Gutenberg)”
― Gustave Flaubert, 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, 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, Sentimental Education

“On his table he piled up humanists, philosophers, and poets. He went to the print room to look at the engravings of Marcantonio. He tried to understand Machiavelli. Gradually the soothing nature of the work calmed him. And delving into the personalities of others he forgot his own, which is perhaps the only way to avoid suffering from it.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“Sometimes your words come back to me like a distant echo, like the sound of a bell carried by the wind, and when I read love passages in. books, it seems to me that it is you about whom I am reading.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“...I'm going to write a little novel entitled 'The History of the Idea of Justice' and won't it be funny!”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“The reminiscences, far too numerous, on which he dwelt produced a disheartening effect on him; he went no further with the work, and his mental vacuity redoubled.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education: The History of a Young Man

“All that people have found fault with as exaggerated in fiction you have made me feel.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“Il n'avait pas un doute sur l'éventualité prochaine de cette conception, et tout ce qu'il jugeait lui être hostile, Sénécal s'acharnait dessus, avec des raisonnements de géomètre et une bonne foi d'inquisiteur”
― Gustave Flaubert, L'éducation sentimentale

“pass your examinations. It is always a good thing to have a handle to your name: and, without more ado, give up your Catholic and Satanic poets, whose philosophy is as old as the twelfth century! Your despair is silly. The very greatest men have had more difficult beginnings, as in the case of Mirabeau.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education