Zitat des Tages von Gustave Flaubert:
I am a man-pen. I feel through the pen, because of the pen.
The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet.
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.
Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.
The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
The future is the worst thing about the present.
The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.
The deplorable mania of doubt exhausts me. I doubt about everything, even my doubts.
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.
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 must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Success is a consequence and must not be a goal.
Read in order to live.
I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.
The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it.
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
One arrives at style only with atrocious effort, with fanatical and devoted stubbornness.
A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.
A superhuman will is needed in order to write, and I am only a man.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
I love good sense above all, perhaps because I have none.
All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.
One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.
What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.