Gustave Flaubert
“One mustn't ask apples of an elm tree.”
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
“Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.”
“Everything one invents is true; poetry is as precise as geometry.”
“The man is nothing, the work — all.”
“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”
“Exuberance is better than taste.”
“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.”
“Art is nothing without form.”
“What is beautiful is moral. That is all there is to it.”
“Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.”
“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.”
“Exuberance is better than taste.”
“One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.”
“The man is nothing, the work—everything.”
“Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.”
“An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.”
“Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.”
“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it.”
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”