Gustave Flaubert

"The author's voice should be like God—everywhere present but nowhere visible."

"One should write about what one knows, and one should feel what one writes."

"I work fourteen hours a day and sometimes feel like I'm not doing anything."

"Style is life! It is the very lifeblood of thought!"

"Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest."

"To understand is to perceive patterns."

"The dreams of youth are the regrets of maturity."

"Whatever is deep is also solitary."

"Good prose is like a window pane."

"Every minute a man is not thinking of his wife is infidelity."

"Mediocrity cannot be allowed to triumph."

"The more one owns, the more one is owned."

"Kindness is the only thing we have that the world does not give."

"One must marry one's star or remain unmarried."

"History resembles painting; some distance is needed for the perspective to be correct."

"The great souls are rare; mediocrity is the rule."

"Change is not progress unless it is truly progress."

"Every man has in his heart a private dungeon."

"The beautiful is as difficult as the true."

"I find life in pieces; I must assemble it into coherence."

"One does not create as one wills, but as one can."

"Perfection is no small thing; it demands everything of us."

"The secret of great art is truth revealed through style."

"We pass through the world forgetting what we should remember."

"The greater the soul, the greater the rebellion."

"To be in love is to be in pain."

"Modern life has made criticism impossible."

"Strength comes from confronting what we fear most."

"Money and success are the false gods of false men."

"The heart remains blind where it wishes to be blind."