10 Gustave Flaubert Quotes on Relationships

Gustave Flaubert quotes on relationships

26. 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.

39. And all this time she was torn by wild desires, by rage, by hatred. The trim folds of her dress hid a heart in turmoil, and her reticent lips told nothing of the storm. She was in love with Leon, and she sought the solitude that allowed her to revel undisturbed in his image.

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.

52. It was for him that she had done it -- for this creature here, this man who understood nothing, who felt nothing.

53. She repented her virtue of days past as though it had been a crime; and what virtue she had left now crumbled under the furious assault of her pride. Adultery was triumphant; and she reveled in the prospect of its sordid ironies. The thought of her lover made her reel with desire; heart and soul she flung herself into her longing, borne toward him on waves of new rapture; and Charles seemed to her as detached from her life, as irrevocably gone, as impossible and done for, as though he were a dying man, gasping his last before her eyes.

75. Often, when they spoke of Paris, she would murmur: 'Ah! How happy we'd be, living there!' 'Aren't we happy here?' the young would softly ask, passing his hand over her hair.

78. Gradually, growing calmer, she came to see that she had been unjust to him. But casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

82. Adultery, Emma was discovering, could be as banal as marriage.

84. He wasn't lying. If he had had it he would probably have given it to her, unpleasant though it usually is to make such generous gifts: of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling and havoc-wreaking.

85. And in his eyes she read a love such as she had never known.