For every bourgeois, in the heat of youth, if only for a day, for a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of heroic enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of oriental princesses; every rotary carries about inside him the debris of a poet.
Gustave FlaubertBetter to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isnโt that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?
Gustave Flaubert[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and 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.
Gustave Flaubert