Gustave Flaubert on writing

Of all lies, art is the least untrue.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

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.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778

• Love

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin1706–1790

• Reading