Gustave Flaubert

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Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live

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Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work

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There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

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At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow

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One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels