"for he was undergoing one of those crises in which the entire soul indistinctly shows what it contains, just as, in a storm, the sea fleetingly opens to reveal everything from the seaweed on its shore to the sand of its greatest depths.  

And he went on: "

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

night watch

"But disparaging those we love always detaches us from them to some extent. It is better not to touch our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands."

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

ball drop

"She was ripping out the lining of a dress whose scraps lay scattered around her; the elder Madame Bovary kept working her squeaking scissors without ever looking up; Charles, in his cloth slipper and the old brown frock coat which he used as a dressing gown, sat with his hands in his pockets and remained as silent as the two ladies; and near them, wearing a little white apron, Berthe was scraping the gravel of the path with her shovel."

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

"These women, all rushing into his mind at once, got in each other's way and grew smaller, as though compressed to a common level of love. Picking up handfuls of mingled letters, he amused himself for several minutes by letting them cascade from one hand to the other. Finally, bored and drowsy, he put the box back into the wardrobe and said to himself, 'What a lot of nonsense!' 

This summed up his opinion, for his amorous pleasures, like children in a schoolyard, had so trampled his heart that nothing green could grow in it; they were still more casual than children, for they had not even left their names on the walls."

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

"even though she usually tended to be rather hard-hearted and insensitive to the distress of others, like most people born of country parents, whose souls always keep something of the callousness of their fathers' hands."
 

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

"Meanwhile, in the depths of her soul, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept scanning the solitude of her life with anxious eyes, straining to sight some far-off white sail in the mists of the horizon."

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

"His natural irresponsibility eventually led him to break all his good resolutions. One day he missed a visit to the hospital, the next day a lecture; he liked this first taste of idleness and gradually abandoned his courses altogether."

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert