- Gustave Flaubert: [at his trial] To declare that men have absolute power over truth is blasphemy, and the last delusion. Truth lives forever, men do not.
- Gustave Flaubert: There are those who are offended by her, and who see in Emma Bovary's life an attack upon public morality. Gentlemen of the court, I maintain that there is truth in her story, and that a morality which has within it no room for truth is no morality at all. Men may dislike truth. Men may find truth offensive and inconvenient. Men may persecute the truth, subvert it, try by law to suppress it. But to maintain that men have the final power over truth is blasphemy and the last illusion. Truth lives forever. Men do not.
- Gustave Flaubert: She had learned to be a woman for whom experience would always be a prison, and freedom would lie always beyond the horizon.
- Charles Bovary: [to the Marquis] I'm just a village doctor and it isn't often I have the honor of murdering such a distinguished patient.
- Charles Bovary: This could be a disaster, Emma, these people are aristocrats, I know them, I've treated their servants.
- Rodolphe Boulanger: I'm a fairly courageous man, Emma, but I was afraid of you.
- Emma Bovary: No! Oh... oh, I ask for too much, I know it. I expected too much of you.
- Rodolphe Boulanger: You asked for something that consumes while it burns - that destroys everything it touches. I didn't want to be destroyed.
- Gustave Flaubert: Could it have been otherwise? She had wept no doubt in the early morning hours. Was Emma the first bride to weep while the bridegroom slept? Or the last? Tristan, Lancelot, love in a Scotch cottage, love in a Swiss chalet...
- Lheureux: I am in the business of making money, I leave the matter of morals to the priests and the philosophers.
- Emma Bovary: You scoundrel!
- Lheureux: I beg your pardon?
- Emma Bovary: You monster!
- Lheureux: It's hardly becoming, Madame Bovary, for a woman of your character to start calling names. I've tolerated your conduct for too long. The things I've witnessed! The cheating, the lying, the insatiable greed! What ininquities! What sordid passions! Your child and husband deceived! All morals abandoned! Every loyalty forsworn while you indulged yourself with any man that came your way!
- Emma Bovary: Oh, don't! Please!
- Lheureux: And now you call me names. I am in the business of making money, Madame Bovary, a recognized, honorable profession, a profession which I am confident bears public comparison with yours.