Contact with the world, with which I have been steadily rubbing shoulders now for fourteen months, makes me feel more and more like returning to my shell. I hate the crowd, the herd. It seems to me always atrociously stupid or vile.

Gustave Flaubert
About This Quote

In his book, The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky writes about an elderly man who is forced into a society where he is uncomfortable. He writes that the man hates the crowd as it makes him feel stupid and never as smart as those around him. In this quote Dostoyevsky is describing the thoughts of a character in the book.

Source: Correspondance

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  1. It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.
  2. Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
  3. Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.
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