Gustave Flaubert Quotes

How can I fail when I have no purpose?

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

I don't care where I'm from, nor where I'm going. From hell to hell.

I think people in Europe are generally pessimistic about the future. They have low expectations; they're not working hard to change things. When you're a slacker with a pessimistic view of the future, you're likely to meet those expectations.

I do get cynical, but what can you do? It doesn't make any difference.

At the beginning of 'A Christmas Carol,' Scrooge embodies one of the central tenets of depression: that one has always been this way - and always will be.

I've never had any intentions about anything. That's why I am where I am today, which is neither here nor there, in a literal sense.

She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

In a world that's ugly and a lie, it's hard to even want to try.

I have few illusions: the cause is lost in advance. As for me, I do my part, which is to drag a fairly drab existence to its conclusion.

I'm a pessimist by nature. I don't think things are ever going to work out, I'm not particularly ambitious.

I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? Jesus Christ, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn’t let me.

"Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?" The Imass shrugged before replying. "I think of futility, Adjunct." "Do all Imass think about futility?" "No. Few think at all." "Why is that?" The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. "Because, Adjunct, it is futile."

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone.

Let whatever is going to happen to me happen. I'm expecting the worst for myself and I'm resigned to it.

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

I think by now I have made it fairly clear that I am not very happy with the word hope. I don't believe in people just hoping.

People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism into deep cynicism.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I can't do anything to change events anyway.

As a Scandinavian, I like hopelessness and the weird austerity in the hopelessness of things.

I don't look forward to anything. I take things as they come.

I don't hope for anything. Not only in my professional life, but in my family life also. My total lifestyle is like that.

It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity. Now even that had flickered out.