Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Madame Bovary is myself.

When you are some-'one', why would you wish to be some-'thing'?

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

There's a fundamental stupidity in mankind which is as eternal as life itself.

Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom.

What he then saw was like an apparition. She was seated in the middle of a bench all alone, or, at any rate, he could see no one, dazzled as he was by her eyes.