"Axiom: hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of wisdom. But I include in the word bourgeois, the bourgeois in blouses as well the bourgeois in coats. It is we and we alone, that is to say the literary men, who are the people, or to say it better: the tradition of humanity."

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More by Gustave Flaubert

“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. (14 June 1853)”

“My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my doubt.”

“Tout le monde, par excès de terreur, devenait brave.”

“C'était à Mégara, faubourg de Carthage, dans les jardins d'Hamilcar.”

“The artist must be in his work as God is in creation, invisible and all-powerful; one must sense him everywhere but never see him. (18 March 1857)”

“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. (14 August 1853)”

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