Madame Bovery by Gustave Flaubert

"I wanted to be like the moles I saw strung up on the branches with worms crawling in their bellies-- in other words, dead as a door-nail."

"But a man, surely, should be all-knowing, should excel in multiple activities, be capable of initiating his wife into the violence of passion, the refinements of life, and all the mysteries of existence?"

"But deep in her heart she was waiting for something to happen. Like sailors in distress, she gazed around with despairing eyes up on the loneliness of her life, seeking a white sail on the immensities of the misty horizon."

" 'I adore the sea,' said Monsieur Leon.
'Don't you think,' remarked Madame Bovary, 'that the spirit spreads its wings more freely over the limitless expanse of ocean? Don't you find that the mere sight of the wide horizon elevates the soul, and brings to the mind thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?' "

" 'What pleasanter way of passing the hours can their be than to sit by the fire of an evening with a book, when the lamp shines bright and the wind is battering at the windows?' "

"Gradually absence did its work of quenching love, and habit deadened longing."

"People without religion always come to a bad end!"

"No, no! Not a word against the passions! Are they not the one thing of beauty in this world?-- The one and only source of heroism and enthusiasm, of poetry, music and the arts?-- of all, in short, that makes life worth living?"

"If she loved me from the first, having to wait to see me again must have made her love me even more! On with the good work!"

"Strip away the exaggerations of language, he thought, and there's nothing left but the same old mediocre emotions."

"Human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity."

"She realized that worldly happiness might yield its place to still greater felicities:  that above all other loves was another love which dwindled not neither did it end."