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 Flaubert
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Bouvard. In the end, idealism annoyed him. In the end, 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.

Source: Bouvard And Pecuchet

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More Quotes By Gustave Flaubert
  1. It’s hard to communicate anything exactly and that’s why perfect relationships between people are difficult to find.

  2. Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

  3. Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.

  4. There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

  5. One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.

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