Madame Bovary

"Every happiness seemed to mock her."

"She married without love and loved without marriage."

"The world was too small for her ambitions."

"She wanted to escape, but there was nowhere to go."

"Lies had become as natural to her as breathing."

"She was beautiful, but beauty could not save her."

"Her heart was elsewhere, always elsewhere."

"What cruel fate had placed her here?"

"She had read too many novels."

"Mediocrity was her prison."

"She was consumed by longings she could not name."

"Love, for her, was only a word."

"She dreamed of everything except her real life."

"What is the good of beauty if it brings only suffering?"

"She had become a stranger to her own life."

"The more she revealed herself, the more she hid her true self."

"Money! She was always thinking of money."

"Desire, always desire!"

"She loved him less and less."

"Why had she married? Why not?"

"She was not happy, and never had been happy."

"Reality had never stood a chance against her imagination"

"She had loved the idea of love more than love itself"

"Her desperation took the form of recklessness"

"She saw her life as a series of betrayals by the world"

"Her passion was a flame that consumed everything it touched"

"She had wanted everything and deserved nothing"

"The gap between her dreams and reality grew wider each day"

"She believed happiness was always one affair away"

"Her tragedy was not in her circumstances but in her refusal to accept them"