A Quote by Gustave Flaubert

Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

Gustave Flaubert

Quote Topics

Asked Boundless Expanse Freely Gives Ideal Infinite Madame Mind More Moves Presence Rise Seem Sight Soul Thoughts

Quote Author

Gustave Flaubert
French - Novelist
December 12, 1821 - May 8, 1880

Flaubert's famous sentence, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("Madame Bovary, she is me"), in reality means, " Madame Bovary, c'est nous" ("Madame Bovary, she is us"), in our modern incapacity to live a "good-enough" life.

Sophie Barthes

I have a boundless passion for Flaubert. It's unthinkable to me that someone might not have read 'Madame Bovary.' He writes with a scalpel. Everything has meaning. My students were not allowed not to like him!

Brigitte Macron

An interviewer asked me what book I thought best represented the modern American woman. All I could think of to answer was: Madame Bovary.

Joseph McCarthy

Madame Bovary is timeless. It is not just about the female condition in France in the 1840s. It's not a simple cautionary tale. Emma is more than a character; she gives us an insight into human nature. With Emma, we are diving into the complexities of Flaubert's psyche.

Sophie Barthes

Blessed is he who carries within himself a God, an ideal, and who obeys it: ideal of art, ideal of science, ideal of the gospel virtues, therein lie the springs of great thoughts and great actions; they all reflect light from the Infinite.

Louis Pasteur

It's no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way .

Terry Pratchett

Madame Bovary is myself.

Gustave Flaubert

I don't want my novel to be like Madame Bovary, finely crafted with the life edited out of it. I want my novel to be like a friend telling me a story -- so we go off on thoughts; that's the way it is.

Tama Janowitz

In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.

Swami Vivekananda

I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.

Lydia Davis

But you have read Madame Bovary?' (I'd never heard of her books.) 'No.

David Mitchell

Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects.

Sri Aurobindo

Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.

Salman Rushdie

I always wanted to be Jo in 'Little Women.' She's a bit reckless and feckless, always getting into trouble like me. But I'm probably more like Madame Bovary.

Sue Townsend

Modern mathematics, that most astounding of intellectual creations, has projected the mind's eye through infinite time and the mind's hand into boundless space.