The principal thing in the world is to keep the soul aloft.

Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness.

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.

Once one has kissed a cadaver's forehead, there always remains something of it on the lips, an infinite bitterness, an aftertasteof nothingness that nothing can erase.

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.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

A memory is a beautiful thing, it's almost a desire that you miss.