Madame Bovary (1949)

James Mason: Gustave Flaubert

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Quotes 

• Gustave Flaubert : Forgiveness is still, as I understand it, among the Christian sentiments.

• Gustave Flaubert : [at his trial]  To declare that men have absolute power over truth is blasphemy, and the last delusion. Truth lives forever, men do not.

• Gustave Flaubert : She had learned to be a woman for whom experience would always be a prison, and freedom would lie always beyond the horizon.

• Gustave Flaubert : There are those who are offended by her, and who see in Emma Bovary's life an attack upon public morality. Gentlemen of the court, I maintain that there is truth in her story, and that a morality which has within it no room for truth is no morality at all. Men may dislike truth. Men may find truth offensive and inconvenient. Men may persecute the truth, subvert it, try by law to suppress it. But to maintain that men have the final power over truth is blasphemy and the last illusion. Truth lives forever. Men do not.

• Gustave Flaubert : Could it have been otherwise? She had wept no doubt in the early morning hours. Was Emma the first bride to weep while the bridegroom slept? Or the last? Tristan, Lancelot, love in a Scotch cottage, love in a Swiss chalet...