A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.

The author, in his work, must be like God in the Universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

To see one's name in print! Some people commit a crime for no other reason.

And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather aremetaphors.

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

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.

She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.