The clerk assured her warmly that idealistic natures were rarely understood.

As she listened to him, Madame Bovary marveled at how old she was: all those re-emerging details made her life seem vaster as though she had endless emotional …

'What's improper about it?' retorted the clerk. 'Everybody does it in Paris!' It was an irresistible and conclusive argument.

That was how they would have liked to be: what they were doing was to dream up ideals and then refashion their past lives to match them. Speech is a rolling-ma…

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.

Was nun andrerseits die Menschen gesellig macht, ist ihre Unfahigkeit, die Einsamkeit und in dieser sich selbst zu ertragen.

Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.