DAGUERREOTYPE Will take the place of painting. (See PHOTOGRAPHY.) (From The Dictionary of Received Ideas, assembled from notes Flaubert made in the 1870s.)

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.

Everything which one invents is true, be sure of it.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?

For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.

All you have to do to make something interesting is to look at it long enough.