DEAR MOM

At every stage of my life I have shirked facing my problems in just this same way; and I shall die at eighty before having formed an opinion of myself, or, perhaps, without writing anything that would have shown me what I could do...However, I worry very little about any of this; I live like a plant, filling myself with sun and light, with colors and fresh air. I keep eating, so to speak; afterwards the digesting will have to be done, then the shitting; and the shit had better be good! That's the important thing.

Gustave Flaubert in a letter to his mother

Cairo, 5 January, 1850

(Flaubert was 28 years old at the time.)

ITALICS MINE

When we arrived at Thebes, our sailors were drumming their darabukehs, the mate was playing his flute, Khalil was dancing with his castanets; they broke off to land.

It was then, as I was enjoying these things, and just as I was watching three wave-crests bending under the wind behind us, that I felt a surge of solemn happiness that reached out towards what I was seeing, and I thanked God in my heart for having made me capable of such joy. I felt fortunate at the thought, and yet it seemed to me that I was thinking of nothing; it was a sensuous pleasure that pervaded my entire being.

in Gustave Flaubert's travel notes from Egypt

4 March, 1850