Gustave Flaubert

“Ah! al­ways busy at what? Read­ing nov­els, bad books, works against re­li­gion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no re­li­gion al­ways ends by turn­ing out badly.”

But what then, made her so un­happy? What was the ex­traordin­ary cata­strophe that had trans­formed her? And she raised her head, look­ing round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suf­fer.

From that mo­ment her ex­ist­ence was but one long tis­sue of lies, in which she en­vel­oped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleas­ure car­ried to such an ex­tent that if she said she had the day be­fore walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left

She cor­rup­ted him from bey­ond the grave.

In her life’s isol­a­tion she centered on the child’s head all her shattered, broken little van­it­ies.

For this was how they would have wished to be, each set­ting up an ideal to which

see­ing that she was hasten­ing to of­fer her­self to that which but a while ago had so angered her, not in the least con­scious of her pros­ti­tu­tion.

Mid all that I have seen and known,—peoples and thrones, loves, glories, sorrows, virtues—what have I ever loved? Nothing—except the mantling shroud that covers me

and when, once in a thousand years, resistless hunger comes, thy food is human flesh, thy drink, men's tears. My steed! I love thee as Pale Death alone can love!

When, O God! shall I sleep in my turn? When wilt Thou cease creating? When may I, digging my own grave, stretch myself out within my tomb, and, swinging thus upon the world, list the last breath, the death-gasp, of expiring nature?