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Life Is So Horrible That One Can Only Bear It By Avoiding It. And That Can Be Done By Living In The World Of Art.
-Gustave Flaubert
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Life Is So Horrible

Gustave Flaubert
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Life Is So Horrible That One Can Only Bear It By Avoiding It. And That Can Be Done By Living In The World Of Art.

Understanding the Quote: "life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding..."

This quote by Gustave Flaubert reflects deeply on the theme of art. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Art, Bears, Done, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Gustave Flaubert interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert is celebrated for insightful thoughts on art and bears. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Art
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There Are Neither Good Nor Bad Subjects. From The Point Of View Of Pure Art, You Could Almost Establish It As An Axiom That The Subject Is Irrelevant, Style Itself Being An Absolute Manner Of Seeing Things.
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The Most Glorious Moments In Your Life Are Not The So-called Days Of Success, But Rather Those Days When Out Of Dejection And Despair You Feel Rise In You A Challenge To Life, And The Promise Of Future Accomplishments.
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Whatever The Thing You Wish To Say, There Is But One Word To Express It, But One Verb To Give It Movement, But One Adjective To Qualify It; You Must Seek Until You Find This Noun, This Verb, This Adjective.
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Remembering The Ball Became For Emma A Daily Occupation. Every Time Wednesday Came Round, She Told Herself When She Woke Up: 'ah! One Week Ago...two Weeks Ago...three Weeks Ago, I Was There!' And, Little By Little, In Her Memory, The Faces All Blurred Together; She Forgot The Tunes Of The Quadrilles; No Longer Could She So Clearly Picture The Liveries And The Rooms; Some Details Disappeared, But The Yearning Remained.
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[t]he Truth Is That Fullness Of Soul Can Sometimes Overflow In Utter Vapidity Of Language, For None Of Us Can Ever Express The Exact Measure Of His Needs Or His Thoughts Or His Sorrows; And Human Speech Is Like A Cracked Kettle On Which We Tap Crude Rhythms For Bears To Dance To, While We Long To Make Music That Will Melt The Stars.
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We Think Of Women At Every Age: While Still Children, We Fondle With A Naïve Sensuality The Breasts Of Those Grown-up Girls Kissing Us And Cuddling Us In Their Arms; At The Age Of Ten, We Dream Of Love; At Fifteen, Love Comes Along; At Sixty, It Is Still With Us, And If Dead Men In Their Tombs Have Any Thought In Their Heads, It Is How To Make Their Way Underground To The Nearby Grave, Lift The Shroud Of The Dear Departed Women, And Mingle With Her In Her Sleep
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I'm Absolutely Removed From The World At Such Times...the Hours Go By Without My Knowing It. Sitting There I'm Wandering In Countries I Can See Every Detail Of - I'm Playing A Role In The Story I'm Reading. I Actually Feel I'm The Characters - I Live And Breath With Them.
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The Rage For Wanting To Conclude Is One Of The Most Deadly And Most Fruitless Manias To Befall Humanity. Each Religion And Each Philosophy Has Pretended To Have God To Itself, To Measure The Infinite, And To Know The Recipe For Happiness. What Arrogance And What Nonsense! I See, To The Contrary, That The Greatest Geniuses And The Greatest Works Have Never Concluded.
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The Great Natures Which Are Good, Are Above Everything Generous And Don't Begrudge The Giving Of Themselves.
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What Is Glory? It Is To Have A Lot Of Nonsense Talked About You.
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The Author, In His Work, Must Be Like God In The Universe, Present Everywhere And Visible Nowhere.
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Fiction Writers
Universe
Here Is True Immorality: Ignorance And Stupidity; The Devil Is Nothing But This. His Name Is Legion.
Stupid
Ignorance
Names
The Most Important Quality Of Art And Its Aim Is Illusion; Emotion, Which Is Often Obtained By Certain Sacrifices Of Poetic Detail, Is Something Else Entirely And Of An Inferior Order.
Art
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Order
Poetry Is A Subject As Precise As Geometry.
Geometry
Poetry Is
Subjects
What Baffled Him Was That There Should Be All This Fuss About Something So Simple As Love.
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Should
One Arrives At Style Only With Atrocious Effort, With Fanatical And Devoted Stubbornness.
Effort
Style
Stubborn
One's Existence Should Be In Two Parts: One Should Live Like A Bourgeois And Think Like A Demigod.
Life
Thinking
Two
Books Aren't Made In The Way That Babies Are: They Are Made Like Pyramids. There's Some Long-pondered Plan, And Then Great Blocks Of Stone Are Placed One On Top Of The Other, And It's Back-breaking, Sweaty, Time Consuming Work. And All To No Purpose! It Just Stands There In The Desert! But It Towers Over It Prodigiously. Jackals Piss At The Base Of It, And Bourgeois Clamber To The Top Of It, Etc. Continue This Comparison.
Baby
Block
Book
Be Regular And Orderly In Your Life, So That You May Be Violent And Original In Your Work.
Inspirational
Life
Work
In My View, The Novelist Has No Right To Express His Opinions On The Things Of This World. In Creating, He Must Imitate God: Do His Job And Then Shut Up.
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Views
Creating
Read In Order To Live.
Book
Reading
Order
A Rich Woman Seems To Have All Her Banknotes About Her, Guarding Her Virtue, Like A Cuirass, In The Lining Of Her Corset.
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Guarding
Wealth
I Took Eugene Sue's Arthur From The Reading-room. It's Indescribable, Enough To Make You Vomit. You Have To Read This To Realize The Pitifulness Of Money, Success, And The Public. Literature Has Become Consumptive. It Spits And Slobbers, Covers Its Blisters With Salve And Sticking-plaster, And Has Grown Bald From Too Much Hair-slicking. It Would Take Christ Of Art To Cure This Leper.
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Reading
Writing
Sometimes I Think I'm Liquefying Like An Old Camembert.
Thinking
Sometimes
But The Disparaging Of Those We Love Always Alienates Us From Them To Some Extent. We Must Not Touch Our Idols; The Gilt Comes Off In Our Hands.
Hands
Idols
Those We Love
Me And My Books In The Same Apartment, Like A Gherkin In Its Vinegar.
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Book
Home
Earth Has Its Boundaries, But Human Stupidity Is Limitless.
Stupidity
Earth
Limitless
I Have Come To Have The Firm Conviction That Vanity Is The Basis Of Everything, And Finally That What One Calls Conscience Is Only Inner Vanity.
Vanity
Literature
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She Did Not Believe That Things Could Remain The Same In Different Places, And Since The Portion Of Her Life That Lay Behind Her Had Been Bad, No Doubt That Which Remained To Be Lived Would Be Better.
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Ordinary
World
Always 'duty.' I Am Sick Of The Word. They Are A Lot Of Old Blockheads In Flannel Vests And Of Old Women With Foot-warmers And Rosaries Who Constantly Drone Into Our Ears 'duty, Duty!' Ah! By Jove! One's Duty Is To Feel What Is Great, Cherish The Beautiful, And Not Accept All The Conventions Of Society With The Ignominy That It Imposes Upon Us.
Beautiful
Feet
Sick
Human Speech Is Like A Cracked Kettle On Which We Tap Crude Rhythms For Bears To Dance To, While We Long To Make Music That Will Melt The Stars.
Dance
Stars
Long
I Live Absolutely Like An Oyster.
Oysters
What Wretched Poverty Of Language! To Compare Stars To Diamonds!
Stars
Poverty
Language
It’s Hard To Communicate Anything Exactly And That’s Why Perfect Relationships Between People Are Difficult To Find.
Relationship
People
Perfect
What I Would Like To Write Is A Book About Nothing, A Book Without Exterior Attachments, Which Would Be Held Together By The Innerforce Of Its Style, As The Earth Without Support Is Held In The Air--a Book That Would Have Almost No Subject Or At Least In Which The Subject Would Be Almost Invisible.
Art
Book
Writing
On Spinach: I Dislike It, And Am Happy To Dislike It Because If I Liked It I Would Eat It, And I Cannot Stand It.
Food
Cooking
Culinary
Nothing Is More Humiliating Than To See Idiots Succeed In Enterprises We Have Failed In.
Inspirational
Humility
Stupidity
Stupidity Is An Immovable Object: You Can't Try To Attack It Wiithout Being Broken By It.
Broken
Stupidity
Trying
Le Charme De La Nouveaute , Peu A' Peu Tombant Comme Un Ve" T Ement, Laissait Voir A' Nu L'e Ternelle Monotonie De La Passion, Qui A Toujours Les Me" Mes Formes Et Le Me" Me Langage. The Charm Of Novelty, Falling Little By Little Like A Robe, Revealed The Eternal Monotony Of Passion, Which Has Always The Same Forms And The Same Language.
Fall
Passion
Littles
Only Three Things Are Infinite. The Sky In Its Stars, The Sea In Its Drops Of Water, And The Heart In Its Tears.
Stars
Memorable
Heart
Abstraction Can Provide Stumbling Blocks For People Of Strange Intelligence.
Block
People
Strange
To Be Simple Is No Small Matter.
Simple
Matter
Sentences Must Stir In A Book Like Leaves In A Forest, Each Distinct From Each Despite Their Resemblance.
Book
Forests
Sentences
By Trying To Understand Everything, Everything Makes Me Dream
Dream
Trying
Through Small Apertures We Glimpse Abysses Whose Sombre Depths Turn Us Faint. And Yet Over The Whole There Hovers An Extraordinary Tenderness.
Life
Glimpse
Aperture
It Is Necessary To Sleep Upon The Pillow Of Doubt.
Sleep
Doubt
Pillow
Talent Is A Long Patience, And Originality An Effort Of Will And Intense Observation.
Patience
Long
Effort
Beautiful Things Spoil Nothing.
Beautiful
Beautiful Things
Spoil
Poetry Is As Precise A Thing As Geometry.
Geometry
Poetry Is
Precise
As Words Have An Effective Power Of Their Own, Curses Reported Against Someone Might Turn Against The Speaker.
Might
Curse
Turns
One Can Be The Master Of What One Does, But Never Of What One Feels.
I Hate You
Doe
Masters
I Hate That Which We Have Decided To Call Realism, Even Though I Have Been Made One Of Its High Priests.
Hate
Literature
Priests
Everything Is There: The Love Of Art.
Art
Artist
What An Elder Sees Sitting; The Young Can't See Standing.
Sitting
Standing Alone
Young
For Every Bourgeois, In The Heat Of Youth, If Only For A Day, For A Minute, Has Believed Himself Capable Of Immense Passions, Of Heroic Enterprises. The Most Mediocre Libertine Has Dreamed Of Oriental Princesses; Every Rotary Carries About Inside Him The Debris Of A Poet.
Princess
Passion
Rotary
That Man Has Missed Something Who Has Never Left A Brothel At Sunrise Feeling Like Throwing Himself Into The River Out Of Pure Disgust.
Drinking
Men
Rivers
There Is Not A Particle Of Life Which Does Not Bear Poetry Within It
Inspirational
Life
Poetry
Everyone, Either From Modesty Or Egotism, Hides Away The Best And Most Delicate Of His Soul’s Possessions; To Gain The Esteem Of Others, We Must Only Ever Show Our Ugliest Sides; This Is How We Keep Ourselves On The Common Level
Soul
Identity
Levels
How We Keep These Dead Souls In Our Hearts. Each One Of Us Carries Within Himself His Necropolis.
Heart
Soul
Carrie
What Stops Me From Taking Myself Seriously, Even Though I Am Essentially A Serious Person, Is That I Find Myself Extremely Ridiculous, Not In The Sense Of The Small-scale Ridiculousness Of Slap-stick Comedy, But Rather In The Sense Of Ridiculousness That Seems Intrinsic To Human Life And That Manifests Itself In The Simplest Actions And The Most Extraordinary Gestures.
Serious Person
Sticks
Gestures
I Believe That If One Always Looked At The Skies, One Would End Up With Wings.
Nature
Believe
Sky
Speech Is A Rolling Press That Always Amplifies One's Emotions.
Speech
Amplify
Rolling
The Public Wants Work Which Flatters Its Illusions.
Want
Flattery
Illusion
Talent Is Long Patience.
Patience
Writing
Long
A Superhuman Will Is Needed In Order To Write, And I Am Only A Man.
Writing
Men
Order
The Citadel Of Machaerus Rose East Of The Dead Sea On A Basalt Peak Shaped Like A Cone, Girdled By Four Deep Valleys; Two About Its Sides, One In Front, And The Fourth Behind.
Book
Sea
Two
There Comes A Point At Which You Stop Writing And Think All The More
Writing
Thinking
Before Her Marriage She Had Thought That She Had Love Within Her Grasp; But Since The Happiness Which She Had Expected This Love To Bring Her Hadn’t Come, She Supposed She Must Have Been Mistaken. And Emma Tried To Imagine Just What Was Meant, In Life, By The Words “bliss,” “passion,” And “rapture” - Words That Had Seemed So Beautiful To Her In Books.
Beautiful
Book
Passion
What Seems Beautiful To Me, What I Should Like To Write, Is A Book About Nothing, A Book Dependent On Nothing External, Which Would Be Held Together By The Strength Of Its Style, Just As The Earth, Suspended In The Void, Depends On Nothing External For Its Support.
Beautiful
Book
Writing
He Dreamed Of Funeral Love, But Dreams Crumble And The Tomb Abides
Dream
Funeral
Tombs
The Most Important Thing In The World Is To Hold Your Soul Aloft.
Karma
Fathers Day
Soul
Adultery ... Could Be As Banal As Marriage.
Adultery
(egypt) Is A Great Place For Contrasts: Splendid Things Gleam In The Dust.
Dust
Egypt
Gleam
The Faster The Word Sticks To The Thought, The More Beautiful Is The Effect.
Beautiful
Literature
Sticks
It Is A Delicious Thing To Write, To Be No Longer Yourself But To Move In An Entire Universe Of Your Own Creating. Today, For Instance, As Man And Woman, Both Lover And Mistress, I Rode In A Forest On An Autumn Afternoon Under The Yellow Leaves, And I Was Also The Horses, The Leaves, The Wind, The Words My People Uttered, Even The Red Sun That Made Them Almost Close Their Love-drowned Eyes.
Horse
Moving
Eye
Tout Ce Qu'on Invente Est Vrai, Soi-en Sure. La Poesie Est Une Chose Aussi Precise Que La Geometrie.
Mathematics
Precise
She Would Have Liked Not To Be Alive, Or To Be Always Asleep.
Alive
… Her Heart Remained Empty Once More, And The Procession Of Days All Alike Began Again. So They Were Going To Follow One Another, Like This, In Line, Always Identical, Innumerable, Bringing Nothing!
Heart
Lines
Empty
Our Ignorance Of History Causes Us To Slander Our Own Times.
Ignorance
History
Literature
Stupidity Lies In Wanting To Draw Conclusions.
Lying
Stupid
Conclusion
Sick, Irritated, And The Prey To A Thousand Discomforts, I Go On With My Labor Like A True Workingman, Who, With Sleeves Rolled Up, In The Sweat Of His Brow, Beats Away At His Anvil, Not Caring Whether It Rains Or Blows, Hails Or Thunders.
Rain
Caring
Blow
I Will Cover You With Love When Next I See You, With Caresses, With Ecstasy. I Want To Gorge You With All The Joys Of The Flesh, So That You Faint And Die. I Want You To Be Amazed By Me, And To Confess To Yourself That You Had Never Even Dreamed Of Such Transports.... When You Are Old, I Want You To Recall Those Few Hours, I Want Your Dry Bones To Quiver With Joy When You Think Of Them.
Love
Sexy
Thinking
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