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Quotes About Boredom

a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.
~ Bertrand Russell
a certain amount of boredom is...essential to a happy life
~ Bertrand Russell
Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a word, is not pleasure, but excitement.
~ Bertrand Russell
I think that in all descriptions of the good life here on earth we must assume a certain basis of animal vitality and animal instinct; without this, life becomes tame and uninteresting. Civilization should be something added to this, not substituted for it; the ascetic saint and the detached sage fail in this respect to be complete human beings. A small number of them may enrich a community; but a world composed of them would die of boredom.
~ Bertrand Russell
Among those who are rich enough to choose their way of life, the particular brand of unendurable boredom from which they suffer is due, paradoxical as this may seem, to their fear of boredom. In flying from the fructifying kind of boredom, they fall a prey to the other far worse kind. A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
~ Bertrand Russell
It must be admitted, however, that life in More's Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull.
~ Bertrand Russell
I was not born happy. As a child, my favourite hymn was :'Weary of earth and laden with my sin.' At the age of five, I reflected that, if I should live to be seventy, I had only endured, so far, a fourteenth part of my whole life, and I felt the long-spread-out boredom ahead of me to be almost unedurable. In adolescense, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.
~ Bertrand Russell
My main motivation is not to get bored. I'm just hoping I get a vaguely maverick reputation.
~ Vikram Seth
I do love being amongst creative people and facilitating that and being inspired by people. I get very bored with just competence and require inspiration all around me.
~ Marc Platt
I think I'm a terrible researcher. I find it very boring and frustrating, but the things you can find are better than what I could imagine. And when you find them, it's wonderful, and they don't feel artificial.
~ Andrew Sean Greer
Your basic, well-made novel by Ian McEwan or Jonathan Franzen just bores me silly.
~ David Shields
People get used to more complex forms of entertainment, and they become bored by simpler forms. Television has become more complex in order to feed our demand.
~ Alex Tabarrok
What does Resistance feel like?   First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.
~ Steven Pressfield
What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.
~ Steven Pressfield
First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.
~ Steven Pressfield
Resistance first feel like unhappiness. We're bored, no satisfaction, guilt, but we can't put our finger on it. Vices kick in.
~ Steven Pressfield
boredom is a self-inflicted wound. Heal thyself.
~ Stuart Woods
Contributing to the difference in my attitude was the fact that my rage had begun to bore me, and my long whiny tale of woe had become tedious even to my own ears. As much fun as I'd had being irate, the drama had become repetitive. I could probably still wring sympathy from a stranger, but the recital had taken on a certain rote quality that lacked energy and conviction.
~ Sue Grafton
Boredom on social occasions is an inescapable hazard for the over-educated.
~ Susan Howatch
For boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
~ Susan Sontag
Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing "we" can do—but who is that "we"?—and nothing "they" can do either—and who are "they"?—then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.
~ Susan Sontag
One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.
~ Josephine Tey
One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.
~ Josephine Tey
I can't say for sure: at the first mention of the firmament, I start bleeding tears of terminal boredom. I grow restless. I flick ahead. It appears to go like this: firmament, superlong middle part, Jesus. You could spend half your life reading about the barren wives and the kindled wraths and all the rest of it before you got to the do-unto-others part, which as I understand it is the high-water mark.
~ Joshua Ferris