Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart. - Gustave Flaubert

It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. (9 December 1852)

Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings, — a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.