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“She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification â€� for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it was scattered among ruins.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Il s’était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu’elles n’avaient pour lui rien d’original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses ; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l’éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parité des expressions. Parce que des lèvres libertines ou vénales lui avaient murmuré des phrases pareilles, il ne croyait que faiblement à la candeur de celles-là ; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres ; comme si la plénitude de l’âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque personne, jamais, ne peut donner l’exacte mesure de ses besoins, ni de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Prima di sposarsi, Emma aveva creduto d'amare; ma la felicità che avrebbe dovuto nascere dal quell'amore non era venuta, e pensava che doveva essersi sbagliata. Ella cercava ora, di sapere che cosa volessero esattamente dire, nella vita, le parole felicità, passione ed ebbrezza, che le erano sembrate tanto belle, lette nei libri”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Abituata alla tranquillità, desiderava per contrasto tutto ciò che era movimentato. Amava il mare soltanto per le sue tempeste, e la vegetazione soltanto se cresceva a stento e rada in mezzo alle rovine.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Love, that marvelous thing which had hitherto been like a great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies, was at last within her grasp.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Dar cum sa vorbesti despre un rau care nu poate fi descris,care isi schimba infatisarea ca norii, care se involbureaza ca vantul?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“First he anointed her eyes, once so covetous of all earthly luxuries; then her nostrils, so gluttonous of caressing breezes and amorous scents; then her mouth, so prompt to lie, so defiant in pride, so loud in lust; then her hands that had thrilled to voluptuous contacts; and finally the soles of her feet, once so swift when she had hastened to slake her desires, and now never to walk again.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Bisognava ridurre alle loro giuste proporzioni i discorsi esagerati che nascondono affetti mediocri. Come se la piena del cuore traboccasse talvolta nelle metafore più vacue. Giacché nessuno ha mai l'esatta misura dei propri bisogni, delle proprie idee, dei propri dolori, giacché la parola umana è come una caldaia incrinata sulla quale battiamo per cavare, alla fine, una musica capace di far ballare gli orsi: e dire che, invece, vorremmo intenerire le stelle!”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Léon was het uitzichtloos verliefd zijn meer dan beu; daarbij meldde zich de neerslachtigheid die wordt veroorzaakt door de sleur van een eentonig bestaan dat geen doel of leidraad heeft, dat niet wordt gedragen door enige hoop.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Alles eek haar gehuld in een zwart waas dat over het oppervlak van de dingen zweefde, en het verdriet trok zacht huilend door haar ziel, als de winterwind door een verlaten kasteel. Het was zo'n mijmeren waarin men verzinkt om wat nooit meer terugkomt, een matheid die ons telkens overvalt na een niet te herroepen daad, een smart ten slotte, veroorzaakt door het stokken van een vertrouwde beweging, door het abrupt stilvallen van een lang aangehouden trilling.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Emma leek op alle andere maîtresses; en nu de bekoring van het nieuwe langzamerhand als een kledingstuk van haar afgleed, kwam de eentonigheid van de hartstocht bloot, die altijd dezelfde vorm heeft, die dezelfde taal spreekt.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Madame Bovary was nog nooit zo mooi geweest als nu; zij bezat de raadselachtige schoonheid die uit vreugde, geestdrift en succes voortspruit, een schoonheid die ontstaat wanneer de aard van het wezen harmonieert met de uiterlijke omstandigheden.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Het woord is trouwens net een mangel die gevoelens gladstrijkt.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Zij haatte niemand meer; een wemelend halfduister daalde neer over haar brein, en van alle aardse klanken hoorde Emma alleen nog de gestadige klacht van dit arme hart, zacht en vaag, als de laatste klanken van een wegstervende symfonie.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“(...) na zoveel onenigheid hadden ze elkaar ten slotte gevonden in dezelfde menselijke zwakheid; en zij verroerden zich al net zomin als het lijk naast hen, dat eveneens door de slaap scheen overmand”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l'éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Il en voulait à Emma de cette victoire permanente. Il s'efforçait même à ne pas la chérir; puis, au craquement de ses bottines, il se sentait lâche, comme les ivrognes à la vue des liqueurs fortes.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Every time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses - some verses for herself, a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying for her a sonnet in a "Keepsake". This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learned this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profundity and dissimulation?”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Anna is not just a woman, not just a splendid specimen of womanhood, she is a woman with a full, compact, important moral nature: everything about her character is significant and striking, and this applied as well to her love. She cannot limit herself as another character in the book, Princess Betsy, does, to an undercover affair. Her truthful and passionate nature makes disguise and secrecy impossible. She is not Emma Bovary, a provincial dreamer, a wistful wench creeping along crumbling walls to the beds of interchangeable paramours. Anna gives Vronski her whole life, consents to a separation from her adored little son—despite the agony it costs her not to see the child and she goes to live with Vronski first abroad in Italy, and then on his country place in central Russia, though this "open" affair brands her an immoral woman in the eyes of her immoral circle. (In a way she may be said to have put into action Emma's dream of escaping with Rodolphe, but Emma would have experienced no wrench from parting with her child, and neither were there any moral complications in that little lady's case.) Finally Anna and Vronski return to city life. She scandalizes hypocritical society not so much with her love affair as with her open defiance of society's conventions.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature

“Poor thing! She had loved him, after all.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madam Bovary

“In her enthusiasms she had always looked for something tangible: she had loved the church for its flowers, music for its romantic words, literature for its power to stir the passions...”
― Gustave Flaubert

“This man could teach you nothing; he knew nothing, he wished for nothing. He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought to him.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, of Beranger! My credo is the credo of Rousseau!”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“There’s a little Emma Bovary in all of us.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Anna rolled her eyes and threw her head back and for a moment Emma looked at her and saw in her eager face something strange and diabolical and enchanting.”
― Pauline Melville, The Master of Chaos