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.
She worries over the way her love for me comes and goes, appears and disappears. She doubts its reality simply because it isn't as steadily pleasurable as a kitten. God knows it is sad. The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on earth.
The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That's the way it will be with our love for each other
On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other.
May I ask your name, my lady? Or perhaps angels have no names, only beautiful faces.
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning.
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