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About this quote

What does it mean?
Feelings alone are not enough for art; structure and technique are equally essential.
In plain terms
You need both emotion and structure to make good art.
What can you take from it?
Art requires both emotional content and technical form to succeed.

Where it applies

  • creating art
  • critiquing work
  • learning craft

Putting it to work

  • writing
  • painting
  • design

Questions to consider

  • Is form more important than feeling in art?
  • Can bad form ruin good emotion?

Another view

It may undervalue raw emotion that lacks polished form.

More from Gustave Flaubert

  1. Quelle atroce invention que celle du bourgeois, n'est-ce pas?

    Permalink to quote #2
  2. One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

    Permalink to quote #3
  3. An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.

    Permalink to quote #4

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