Boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us.

What an elder sees sitting; the young can't see standing.

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.

Of all possible debauches, traveling is the greatest that I know; that's the one they invented when they got tired of all the others.

The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.

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.