We shouldn’t maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands.

Flaubert’s aphorism warns against the impulse to “test,” debunk, or roughly handle the people and ideals we elevate. Idols are often gilded—made to look like gold by a thin surface of admiration, myth, or selective memory. If we maltreat them, the coating rubs off not only from the idol but onto us: we end up stained by cynicism, disappointment, or complicity in the very falseness we expose. The line captures a modern tension between reverence and disenchantment: demystification can be necessary, but it can also leave the critic dirtied by the process, and it may reveal that what we worshiped was never solid gold in the first place.