Gustave Flaubert

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

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

"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."

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

"God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world"

"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."

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

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

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

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

"Art requires neither complaisance nor politeness; nothing but faith, faith and freedom."

"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."

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

"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."