Gustave Flaubert

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

"The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."

"There is no truth. There is only perception."

"A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies."

"All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry."

"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

"Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry."

"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."

"Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry."

"Read in order to live."

"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."

"The heart, like the stomach, wants a varied diet."

"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."