This is indeed a funny country. Yesterday, for example, we were in a cafe which is one of the best in Cairo, and there were, at the same time as ourselves, inside, a donkey shitting, and a gentleman w...
The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history. Felicite evoked Paradise, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this she dev...
Speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.
She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.
She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.
Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.
Kendi kendine: — Onu seviyorum ama, diyordu. Ne olursa olsun mutlu değildi, hiçbir zaman mutlu olmamıştı. Hayatın bu yetersizliği, dayandığı şeylerin hemen bozulup çürümesi nereden geliyordu?.. Ama, b...
It was the fault of destiny!
I refuse to consider Art a drain-pipe for passion, a kind of chamberpot, a slightly more elegant substitute for gossip and confidences. No, no! Genuine poetry is not the scum of the heart.
He had the vanity to believe men did not like him – while men simply did not know him.
For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.
Financial demands, of all the rough winds that blow upon our love, (are) quite the coldest and the most biting.
Emma repeated to herself, Good Heavens! Why did I marry?
Cosa c’è di meglio, in realtà, che starsene la sera accanto al fuoco con un bel libro in mano, mentre il vento sbatte contro le persiane e arde il lume della lampada?
Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curios...
But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish...
And he was beginning to feel that discouragement which is engendered by a life of repetition, when no interest guides nor expectation sustains it.
I believe in Supreme Being, a Creator, whoever he may be, it's of no importance to me, who put us here on earth to do our duty as citizens and fathers; but I don't need to go to church and kiss silver...
What a man Balzac would have been if he had known how to write.
In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.