The writers didn't just throw that line in there. Rimbaud said it, and it makes perfect sense.

haha it's a contradiction, therefore, you are right, it doesn't make sense.
http://www.fictionpress.com/u/508450/groovacious

You and ya papa soooo smart

This message has been deleted.

I think it means that nothing in life has the ability to affect you so much that it is unbearable. It is unbearable that nothing is that powerful.
It is a paradox, a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Needless to say, hoabob got served.

I haven't seen this film [yet..] but I would probably interpret that line as having gotten to such a point in your life that nothing seems terrible or disgusting because everything in your life has been that way and knowing this is an unbearable thought.

Whoa, we have a new Oscar Wilde down here.
AND his dad (LOL).
You shouldn't watch movies you don't have much chance to understand, and especially with your dad.

"The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable."
its too simple to be explained
still i was amused by the story of you and your DAD

Makes perfect sense, really. There are various ways to interpret that, but it comes down to the same idea that no matter how much pain you are in, you continue to bear it. You continue to live on, hence why he stabs his hand when he says it. It demonstrated that he was suffering great emotional pain, and then even greater physical pain. Two extremes occurring at once, but he was still enduring them to their fullest extent. The fact that your body does not block or shut these pains out is the only unbearable aspect to life, but it is unbearable in the sense that it is unfortunate.

This message has been deleted.

the line is a bit goofy, but it makes perfect sense. some things are unbearable: a bullet to the head, a Mack truck, cancer, etc. however, it's bizarre that we are able to inflict death/pain to others without dying. Aside from our physical limitations, there are no limits to our mental experiences. he seemed to lack a conscience like many sociopaths. without a conscience how does one know there is a god. he was searching for significance through pain and guilt. he was searching for Pandoras box by indulging. after indulging he felt empty. there was no divine hand limiting what a man could mentally experience. Its as though God lets us experience any thought, perform any act, and we never cross a line of any consequence, at least not in this life. Its dependent on your religious beliefs if judgment comes after life and if death is a reflection of sin in the world. Its as though Rimbaud wanted to know that there was some form of mental anguish that could lead to a person's demise. the existence of un-crossable lines would have gave him a sense of purpose. he appears to be an atheist that is proactively searching for God's judgment. most passively seek God's existence through signs of his mercy. since he can find no consequence to anything he does, he concludes god doesn't exist or like us feels numb to most everything. Rimbaud didn't believe in hell or heaven. he was searching for his judgment and pleasure on earth. he found neither. if nothing could mentally kill him he figured his mental state was incapable of life. He felt that was unbearable, and suicide was redundant. You cant kill what is already dead. He looked at the mind as inanimate clockwork. Committing suicide would do as much good as trying to kill a watch. that's a hard pill to swallow for someone so cerebral.
these thoughts have been presented more eloquently, but i thought the search for god's existence was left out.

it makes sense to me
he means that his life is so empty that nothing is unbearable when it should be.
so that is the only thing thats unbearable, the fact that nothing is unbearable
see???

you watched it with your dad?
I Porker Face!

I didn't feel sorry for Verlaine. I liked the wickedness of DiCaprio's performance, though. He was very playful with the character. Too bad the movie itself wasn't better.

Paul Verlaine, who was himself a very great poet, is traditionally seen as a weak, bourgeois namby-pamby in this scene. But he risked and lost everything, everything, for the love of his friend. Perhaps people now-a-days do not realise what it was for a married man and a father to be incarcerated for sodomy and attempted murder of his male lover in the Nineteenth century. Verlaine was like a dead man, when he came out of prison.
But he survived, proving the truth of Rimbaud's dictum. That Verlaine, his lust intact, could have survived his own destruction, like an undrownable cockroach, disgusted Rimbaud. Yet that's what men do. It's their filthy immortality.
Cosmic irony, Verlaine survived to make his lover's reputation, out of his precious cache of Rimbaud manuscripts.
But let no one call Verlaine a coward. This was the man who set his wife on fire, as a gift to his lover.
If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.

People who wound up in concentration camps during the Nazi era probably never imagined they could endure such misery, but they did. There seems to be no limit to the suffering that human beings can endurebecause there seems to be no limit to the suffering that human beings can inflict.
We take this in and accept it. We endure the unedurable that we ourselves have made. And we cover it up with social constructs, as so many masks. Masks that mask horrible pain we ourselves make.
This haunted Arthur Rimbaud. He had an almost mystical intuition of what was behind those masks. He sought to remove them.
But in his quest to experience "all that man can experience", up to the purifying limits, he found no limits. He only found an ever deeper mess. In his attempt to devise a new language, one that would leave behind all ties and sentimentalities, that would speak "to the soul on behalf of the soul, subsuming all things" having experienced them all, he never expected to find human putrefaction the one infinite quality in man.
That man will put up with anything, without rebelling, he found unbearable, and he bitterly renounced literature as he bitterly renounced Verlaine's friendship, because it had become symbolic of man's cosmic masochism, one more lid over the sewer.
If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard, It can also be like a chicken-pox mark.

To me InsectKin has it - the line is about the terror of apathy, the despair at feeling nothing. The only thing that he feels is a sense of his utter lack of feeling.
He can stab his lover in the hand and still feel nothing and feels a mourning for those feelings that would keep him from doin such things
I think he is saying that despite himself (and his evident prior digust for Verlaine's contradictory behaviour) that he envies Verlaine for all his apologies. Because he himself is too cold to the world to ever feel the kind of guilt that would make him say sorry.
"And if all this seems to be eccentric
Be aware be sure I meant it"
I
Johnny Marr

I think that the poster several posts up got it. Rimbaud is so caught up in what is going on in his head that sometimes he can't acknowledge what is right in front of him. As for the stabbing of Verlaine's hand.don't forget that just moments before in that scene he tells Verlaine that if he (meaning Verlaine) is going to be violent he must be violent and not apoligze after he commits his violent acts. Rimbaud shows no remorse for stabbing Verlaine's hand, he is teaching Verlaine a lesson. Verlaine is a very weak man, and Rimbaud trys to teach him to live his life as he wishes with no regrets and with meaning. You see this in the scene where Verlaine shoots Rimbaud's hand. Verlaine has yet to learn how to be strong and needs Rimbaud to be his strength. Sorry I got off topic but I just saw the film and am still processing it.

you and your father are stupid.

I like this line as well. As another poster said, I don't know how the OP could have found the line to be so funny as in something to be mocked. That's what makes no sense to me.
What are you rebelling against?

I also love this line. It makes total sense to me. It reminds me of the thought that you can get used to anything (no matter how unbearable). Someone above mentioned that it conveys a feeling of apathy it's perfect.

You would do as well to laugh at your own face in the mirror

you go man, i so don't agree with this dude, if he/she has such a narrow mind and is incappable to understand the slightist "philosophic" phrase, he/she sounldn't write. Good luck,hope to hear from you