Gustave Flaubert

“The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed.”

“The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.”

“I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go...”

“But that which fanaticism formerly promised to the elect, science now accomplishes for all men.”

“Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mis...”

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe”

“An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”

“Doubt … is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness.”

“Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.”

“Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small....”

“You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or f...”

“The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.”

“Let us not kid ourselves; let us remember that literature is of no use whatever, except in the very special case of somebody's wishing to become, of all things, a Professor of Literature.”

“Adieu, mon cher vieux. Relis et rebûche ton conte. Laisse-le reposer et reprends-le, les livres ne se font pas comme les enfants, mais comme les pyramides, avec un dessin prémédité, et en ap...”

“One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.”

“The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promis...”

“The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.”

“As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”

“The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him.”

“I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.”