Gustave Flaubert

"What we call progress is usually the exchange of one nuisance for another."

"The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing."

"The artist must be like God in his creation - invisible yet omnipresent."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to prevent oneself from being deserted in the pursuit of a cherished object."

"Talent is a long patience."

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

"Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living."

"I love my work with a love that is frantic and perverted, as one loves his mistress."

"The author in his book must be like God in his universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

"One must always think of everything."

"The more one owns, the more it owns you."

"How glorious it is—but how painful too—to be a writer!"

"Facts are the air of all narrative."

"The only way to tolerate existence is to lose oneself in literature."

"Existence is a form of madness."

"Stupidity is something unshakeable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it."

"You don't make art for art's sake, you make it because you must."

"Illness is a doctor to whom we pay our dues; when he has cured us, we have no further need of him."

"There is something deeper in us than thought."

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

"Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to."

"The worst misery is being alone."

"A man is not old as long as he is seeking something."

"One's duty is to feel what is great and to strive toward it."

"I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better."

"A writer who does not like to write is an unhappy man."

"Justice without force is impotent; force without justice is tyranny."

"The cult of beauty must not cause the disappearance of the cult of truth."

"We must not say that a thing is strange, for nothing is strange to those who work."

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness."