One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form.

Happiness is a monstrosity! Punished are those who seek it.

Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

There are two infinities that confuse me: the one in my soul devours me; the one around me will crush me

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests.

I sometimes feel a great ennui, profound emptiness, doubts which sneer in my face in the midst of the most spontaneous satisfactions. Well, I would not exchange all that for anything, because it seems to me, in my conscience, that I am doing my duty, that I am obeying a superior fatality, that I am following the Good and that I am in the Right.