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

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

His rage had sent him into Latin: he would have spouted Chinese or Greenlandic had he been able to, for he was in the throes of one of those crises in which th…

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 …

The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for gene…

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

Customs do not concern themselves with right or wrong or reason. But they have to be obeyed; one reasons all around them until he is tired, but he must not tra…