Extended Reading

Madame Bovary quotes

  • Emma Bovary: I realized that before getting married I was contemplating my coming life like a child. In a theater, um... sitting there in high spirits, and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It was a blessing in my early youth that I did not know what was really going to happen. When I look back now, it seems that I was like an innocent prisoner, condemned not to death, but to life, and as-yet unconscious of what the sentence meant. And the longer I live, the more clearly I feel that on a whole, life's a disappointment.

  • Monsieur Lheureux: This is going to be very expensive.

    Emma Bovary: You will extend me credit, will you not?

    Monsieur Lheureux: [slides fabric swatches toward her] Money should never be the problem - only the solution.