What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for a woman who embodies distinct characteristics, whether they are positive or negative, rather than being bland or unremarkable.
In this quote, Alfred De Musset articulates the human longing for connection and the complexity of attraction. He suggests that a person's unique traits, whether they be beauty, kindness, wit, or even wickedness, contribute to their allure, emphasizing that it is better to be something distinct than to be mundane or average. This reflects a deeper understanding of love and attraction, which often thrives on contrast and individuality.
In practice
In a romantic context, one might use this quote during a toast at a wedding to highlight the beauty of unique traits in a partner.
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream
The only true language in the world is a kiss.
A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself.
Without solitude, Love will not stay long by your side.
Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.
When you are very old, and sit in the candle - light at evening spinning by the fire, you will say, as you murmur my verses, a wonder in your eyes, 'Ronsard sang of me in the days when I was fair.
His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.
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