Gustave Flaubert Quotes

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

How does one get bored of life?

When you sing the same song over and over and over again, it stops meaning what it originally meant to you. It starts sounding like white noise, or my washing machine.

Come morning I found the day as I have found every other day--without relief or explanation.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.

Like warmed-up cabbage served at each repast, The repetition kills the wretch at last.

Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.

I don't need to be told the same thing every day, every morning, same words.

Continuity in everything is unpleasant.

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

one day in the country is exactly like another.

My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored.

God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light. My heart has the taste of ashes, and my throat is tight and weary with weeping. What is a lost soul? It is one that has turned from its true path and is groping in the darkness of remembered ways—

In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business---no variety---it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.

The same old thing--even if it's champagne--is still the same old thing.

Sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to.

So many times I feel I'm using the same words over and over, like a woman wearing the same dress every day. So boring!

Change is upsetting. Repetition is tedious. Three cheers for variation!

One listless day followed another, with nothing to distinguish one from the next. You could have changed the order and no one would have noticed.

words same as always same as nothing when nothing is the same

All the little emptiness of love!