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

See many skies and seas.

Gustave Flaubert

More information about this quote
Topic
Broadening one's horizons Travel

Author

Gustave Flaubert
Source
Letters of Gustave Flaubert
Medium
Letter
Statement Type
Advice
Language
French
Time
1857 1850s 19th century
Authentication Score 1
Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letter to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie. c. 1840.

Another quote from the 1850s

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end... We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

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Read Walden at Project Gutenberg
More information about this quote
Topic
Can vs. should

Author

Henry David Thoreau
Source
Economy Walden
Genre
Autobiography and memoir
Language
English
Time
1854 1850s 19th century
Authentication Score 3
Original Citation

Thoreau, Henry David. "Economy." Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854.

Current Citation

Thoreau, Henry David. "Economy." Walden and Civil Disobedience. Signet, 2012.

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

God is stupidity and cowardice; God is hypocrisy and falsehood. God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil. For as long as men bow before altars, mankind will remain damned, the slaves of kings and priests.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The System of Economic Contradictions

Read The System of Economic Contradictions at theanarchistlibrary.org
More information about this quote
Topic
Nature of God God

Author

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Source
The System of Economic Contradictions
Genre
Philosophical literature Political literature
Language
French
Time
1846 1840s 19th century
Authentication Score 3
Citation

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Systeme des contradictions economiques ou Philosophie de la misere [The System of Economic Contractictions, or Philosophy of Misery]. Paris: Chez Guilla umin et Cie, 1846, ch. 8.