13 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Psychology

Gustave Flaubert quotes on psychology

3. One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

12. Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

13. He is so corrupt that he would willingly pay for the pleasure of selling himself.

37. Had they nothing more to say to each other? Their eyes, certainly, were full of more meaningful talk; and as they made themselves utter banalities they sensed the same languor invading them both: it was like a murmur of the soul, deep and continuous, more clearly audible than the sound of their words. Surprised by a sweetness that was new to them, it didn't occur to them to tell each other how they felt or to wonder why. Future joys are like tropic shores: out into the immensity that lies before them they waft their native softness, a fragrant breeze that drugs the traveler into drowsiness and makes him careless of what awaits him on the horizon beyond his view.

43. Nevertheless the flames did die down -- whether exhausted from lack of supplies or choked by excessive feeding. Little by little, love was quenched by absence; regret was smothered by routine; and the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished. . . . But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose to the horizon. Night closed in completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.

47. 'Do you really not know,' he said, 'that there exist souls that are ceaselessly in torment? That are driven now to dreams, now to action, driven from the purest passions to the most orgiastic pleasures? No wonder we fling ourselves into all kinds of fantasies and follies!'

51. How happy she had been in those days! How free! How full of hope! How rich in illusions! There were no illusions left now. She had had to part with some each time she had ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions -- as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road.

60. The difficulties he foresaw were so formidable that he quickly banished the disagreeable subject from his mind.

65. Self-confidence depends on surroundings: the same person talks quite differently in the drawing room and in the garret, and a rich woman's virtue is protected by her banknotes quite effectively as by any cuirass worn under a corset.

69. The clerk assured her warmly that idealistic natures were rarely understood.

71. His rage had sent him into Latin: he would have spouted Chinese or Greenlandic had he been able to, for he was in the throes of one of those crises in which the soul lays bare its every last corners, just as the ocean, in the travail of a storm, splits open to display everything from the seaweed on its shores to the sand of its deepest bottom.

76. 'I well understand your doing this,' said the notary. 'A man of science can't be expected to burden himself with the practical details of existence.' Charles felt soothed by these oily words: they flattered his weakness, making it look like preoccupation with lofty things.

95. My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my doubt.