quote · Legacy record
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.
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.
Approximate author period: c. 1850 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Gustave Flaubert
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
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- Approximate author period: c. 1850 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1821 to 1880; Wikidata Q43444, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q43444 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 17374; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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