Flaubert On a Good Prose Sentence

What a beastly thing prose is! It's never finished; there is always something to do over. A good prose sentence must be like a good line of verse, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous. That at least is my ambition (there is one thing I'm certain of: there's no one who has ever had in mind a more perfect type of prose than I have; but as for the execution, what weaknesses, good Lord, what weaknesses!). - An Artificial Wilderness, Essays on Twentieth-Century Literature by Sven Birkerts