In my view, the novelist has no right to express his opinions on the things of this world. In creating, he must imitate God: do his job and then shut up.
Gustave FlaubertRead
The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!
Interpretation
What this quote means
Women’s emotions and experiences can be complex and layered, often hiding deeper feelings or emptiness beneath the surface.
Gustave Flaubert's quote uses the metaphor of furniture with hidden compartments to illustrate the intricate and sometimes confusing nature of women's hearts. Just as one would explore the drawers only to find disappointment or emptiness, Flaubert suggests that delving into the emotional depths of a woman can reveal layers of complexity, past hurts, and unfulfilled desires that are not immediately visible.
Themes
WomenRelationshipsEmotionsComplexityHearts
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about understanding women in relationships.
More from Gustave Flaubert
All quotes →She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.
Gustave FlaubertRead
In the dark room a cloud of yellow dust flew from beneath the tool like a scatter of sparks from under the hooves of a galloping horse. The twin wheels turned and hummed. Binet was smiling, his chin down, his nostrils distended. He seemed lost in the kind of happiness which, as a rule, accompanies only those mediocre occupations that tickle the intelligence with easy difficulties, and satisfy it with a sense of achievement beyond which there is nothing left for dreams to feed on.
Gustave FlaubertRead
It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.
Gustave FlaubertRead
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