Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn’t come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “rapture” - words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.

The true poet for me is a priest. As soon as he dons the cassock, he must leave his family.

By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream

The finest works of art are those in which there is the least matter. The closer expression comes to thought, the more the word clings to the idea and disappears, the more beautiful the work of art.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect.

Madame Aubain's servant Felicite was the envy of the ladies of Pont-l'Eveque for half a century.