Taisez-vous, sotte et impertinente créature ; vos phrases de roman nous ennuient. - George Sand

But, alas, I have such a limited spirit, so feeble a memory, that I can’t make any progress. This long illness has parched my poor head. How painful it is to me to open these big books! The odor of damp parchment makes me faint, and all the letters aligned and printed with discouraging symmetry make me dizzy. [...] Just yesterday I confused “objectivity” with “subjectivity” and last night I dreamed about the definition of the absolute. I dreamed I was in a beautiful meadow and watched the flow of a stream of living water. It seemed to me that there were some words written in the depths of its
transparent bed, and I read there all sorts of beautiful things, as though in a book.

Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

"La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu'un roman ne ressemble à la vie."

("Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.")