[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

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.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. I've never sought it (though I desire it) and seek it less and less.

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