Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried but nothing like this can be said of prose.

La prose est née d’hier, voilà ce qu’il faut se dire. Le vers est la forme par excellence des littératures anciennes. Toutes les combinaisons prosodiques ont été faites, mais celles de la prose, tant s’en faut.

Gustave Flaubert

More information about this quote

Topic

Poetry and prose Prose Poetry

Author

Gustave Flaubert

Source

Letters of Gustave Flaubert

Medium

Letter

Language

French

Time

1852 1850s 19th century

Occupation

Novelist Writer

From

France Europe

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letter to Louise Colet. 24 Apr. 1852.

Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, translated and edited by Francis Steegmuller. Faber and Faber, 1981.

Illustrated Quote

A quote by Gustave Flaubert about poetry and prose: “Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves.”
Download
A quote by Gustave Flaubert about poetry and prose: “Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves.”
Download
A quote by Gustave Flaubert about poetry and prose: “Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves.”
Download

Related Quotes

Below are one or more quotes that share at least one tag with the quote at the top of the page

Another quote by Gustave Flaubert

We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary

Buy Madame Bovary at Amazon Buy Madame Bovary at Amazon
Read Madame Bovary at Project Gutenberg
More information about this quote
Topic
Idols

Author

Gustave Flaubert
Source
Madame Bovary
Medium
Novel
Language
French
Time
1857 1850s 19th century
Authentication Score 2
Original Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Moeurs de Province [Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners]. Revue de Paris, 1 Oct. 1856 - 15 Dec. 1856. Serial.

Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, edited and translated by Lydia Davis. Penguin Classics, 2011, pt. 3, ch. 6.

Another quote from the 1850s

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

More information about this quote
Topic
Activism Political progress Social progress Progress
Speaker
Frederick Douglass
Source
West India Emancipation
Medium
Speech
Genre
Political speech
Statement Type
Metaphor, analogy and simile
Language
English
Time
1857 1850s 19th century
Authentication Score 1
Citation

Douglass, Frederick. "West India Emancipation." 3 Aug. 1857, Canandaigua, NY, USA.

Another quote about Poetry

To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little to suggest it, that is the ideal.

Jules Huret

More information about this quote
Topic
Names Poetry
Speaker
Stephane Mallarme [Etienne Mallarme]

Author

Jules Huret
Language
French
Time
1891 1890s 19th century
Authentication Score 1
Citation

Mallarme, Stephane. Quoted in "Sur l'Evolution Litteraire [On Literary Evolution]." Enquete de Huret [Investigation by Jules Huret]. Bibliotheque-Charpentier, 1891.

Another quote originally in French

An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted.

Victor Hugo

Read History of a Crime at Project Gutenberg
More information about this quote
Topic
Power of ideas

Author

Victor Hugo
Source
The History of a Crime
Language
French
Time
1878 1870s 19th century
Authentication Score 2
Citation

Hugo, Victor. Histoire d'un crime [The History of a Crime]. Paris: Calmann-Levy, c. 1878, conclusion, ch. 10.