Madame Bovary

"The heart is a mystery that reason cannot solve."

"Her dreams were her only consolation."

"She had loved novels more than life itself."

"Boredom is the worst of all afflictions."

"She sought in vain for happiness in the arms of men."

"What is passion but a collection of delusions?"

"Her existence had become unbearable."

"She wanted to escape, to flee, to die."

"He loved her, but she did not love him back."

"Her sorrows were real; her joys were invented."

"Art alone was insufficient."

"She dreamed of happiness as of a distant country."

"The past had left her with nothing but regrets."

"Money cannot buy everything."

"She was lost in the intoxication of her dreams."

"Why had she not a husband who understood her?"

"She believed in love as she believed in God—without having seen either."

"Her heart was full of rebellious longings."

"She would have preferred anything to this dullness of existence."

"Everything immediately around her—the tedious country, the mediocre bourgeois, the mediocrity of existence—seemed to her an exception, an accident."

"She had read too many novels."

"Words are such unsatisfactory things."

"The world, after all, is but a collection of follies."

"She was sick of it all; she felt as though she were dying."

"Illusions are the only realities."

"She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart."

"Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with thunder and lightning."

"She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris."

"What a miserable thing to be a woman!"

"She was always inventing some pretext to leave the house."