Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, police up there; people trade, fight, dethrone their kings.
Some shooting stars suddenly slid past, describing a course in the sky like the parabola of a monstrous rocket.
‘My Word,’ said Bouvard, ‘look at those worlds disappearing.’
Pecuchet replied: ‘If our world in its turn danced about, the citizens of the stars would be no more impressed than we are now. Ideas like that are rather humbling.’
‘What is the point of it all?’
‘Perhaps there isn’t a point.’
‘Yet…’ and Pecuchet repeated the word two or three times, without finding anything more to say.
Mots clés science life earth outer-space astronomy
Sometimes, in a daze, they completely dismantled the cadaver, then found themselves hard put to it to fit the pieces together again.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés science
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés creativity artists
The morality of art consists, for everyone, in the side that flatters its own interests. People do not like literature.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés art literature
Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés intelligence abstraction
In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don’t see what use he is.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés god religion language idealism spirituality abstractions
It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés abstraction
I am an obscure and patient pearl-fisherman who dives into the deepest waters and comes up with empty hands and a blue face. Some fatal attraction draws me down into the abysses of thought, down into those innermost recesses which never cease to fascinate the strong. I shall spend my life gazing at the ocean of art, where others voyage or fight; and from time to time I’ll entertain myself by diving for those green and yellow shells that nobody will want. So I shall keep them for myself and cover the walls of my hut with them.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés art creativity
As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.
Gustave FlaubertWhat an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.
Gustave FlaubertMots clés life
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