Quote #24

She might have been glad to confide all these things to someone. But how to speak about so elusive a malaise, one that keeps changing its shape like the clouds and its direction like the wind? She could find no words; and hence neither occasion nor courage came to hand.

More from Gustave Flaubert

  1. It seemed to her that certain portions of the earth must produce happiness -- as thought it were a plant native only to those soils and doo…
  2. But even as they were brought closer together by the details of daily life, she was separated from him by a growing sense of inward detachm…
  3. And now she could not bring herself to believe that the uneventful life she was leading was the happiness of which she had dreamed.
  4. He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought…
  5. The sentimental songs she sang in music class were all about little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers -- mawkish comp…
  6. But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner o…
  7. She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of per…
  8. The music was still throbbing in her ears, and she forced herself to stay awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life she…

All Gustave Flaubert quotes