I just finished reading the book. Why on earth did I wait until now - I don't know. However, here are my favorite parts from "Madame Bovary":
(Part 2, Chapter I) The
chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more
than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on
the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be.
I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and
fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates,
and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we
do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating
the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin
(Part 2, Chapter IV) … Her
husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask
herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great
outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life,
revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart
into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes
when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security
when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.
(Part 2, Chapter VII) The
flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or
because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by little, was quelled by
absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had
empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness
of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for
aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of
tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to
the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides,
and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her.
(Part 2, Chapter X) But she
was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love
without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his
lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm,
which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts
charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer
kept up appearances,
and insensibly his ways
changed.
He had no longer, as
formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that
made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to
lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and
she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness,
and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less.
She did not know if she
regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary,
to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to
rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was
like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.
(Part 2, Chapter XII) He had
so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Emma
was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away
like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same
forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience,
the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips
libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in
the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be
discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest
metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of
his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked
tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to
move the stars.
(Part 3, Chapter VI) … Emma
was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now.
This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to
rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of
heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and
cowardly.
Then, growing calmer, she at
length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of
those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch
our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.