Gustave Flaubert

"You don’t make art out of good intentions."

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

"Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work."

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

"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings."

"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness."

"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"

"There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me"

"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 promise of future accomplishments."

"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness."

"Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live."

"One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels."

"We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means."

"Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings."

"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 promise of future accomplishments."

"I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within."

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."

"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 promise of future accomplishments."

"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything."

"One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness."