Concern for morality makes every work of the imagination false and stupid.

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

I do not like to "interest" the public with myself.

May I die like a dog rather than hasten the ripening of a sentence by a single second!

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.

I invite all brats to throw their cookies at the baker's head if they're not sweet, winos to chuck their wine if it's bad, the dying to shuck their souls when they croak, and men to throw their existence in God's face when it's bitter

What I would like to write is a book about nothing, a book without exterior attachments, which would be held together by the innerforce of its style, as the earth without support is held in the air--a book that would have almost no subject or at least in which the subject would be almost invisible.