Quotes About Routine

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." —T. S. ELIOT, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Having a routine that bordered on stagnancy had its benefits.

Their lives had been an interminable loop of repeated gestures; now their existences were winnowed to this discrete and eternal moment.

They were treated to the same Randall hospitality, the travesties so routine and familiar that they were a kind of weather, and the ones so imaginative in their monstrousness that the mind refused to accommodate them.

Cora's mother and Ava grew up on the plantation at the same time. They were treated to the same Randall hospitality, the travesties so routine and familiar that they were a kind of weather, and the ones so imaginative in their monstrousness that the mind refused to accommodate them.

They were treated to the same Randall hospitality, the travesties so routine and familiar that they were a kind of weather, and the ones so imaginative in their monstrousness that the mind refused to accommodate them. Sometimes such an experience bound one person to another; just as often the shame of one's powerlessness made all witnesses into enemies.

He hovered on unexceptionality.

Another day, another dolor.

The days hardened like loaves: he ate them without appetite.

Why did people think having a job was such a great thing? No matter how much fun you had the night before, you still had to get up early, get shaved and dressed, and go to some business where people expected you to be pleasant and do some work.

three phases of the inmate's mental reactions to camp life become apparent: the period following his admission; the period when he is well entrenched in camp routine; and the period following his release and liberation. The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock. Under certain conditions shock

shave daily, stand and walk smartly, and you'll look fit for work

It was all he'd felt for too long to change now. Maybe it was too late for any other kind of life. This was all he knew. It was safe, insulated. Familiar. An absense of emotion kept him sane. Or what passed for it.

Still, life had a way of adding day to day

When two people have been married for years they seem to become unconscious of each other's bodily presence so that they move as if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered, and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without its loneliness.

Listen. There is a sound like the knocking of railway trucks in a siding. That is the happy concatenation of one event following another in our lives. Knock, knock, knock. Must, must, must. Must go, must sleep, must wake, must get up — sober, merciful word which we pretend to revile, which we press tight to our hearts, without which we should be undone. How we worship that sound like the knocking together of trucks in a siding!

We are all swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shade...

the liftman in the tube is an eternal necessity...

There we stop; there we stand. Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

The weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and wrung dry

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Ma il verme dei viaggi era entrato nei loro cervelli, e non smetteva di roderli. Giovanni trovò, nelle vecchie abitudini di Catania, quell'odore sgradevole che dopo due o tre anni si trova in un abito di fatica. Le passeggiate per il corso, i discorsi con gli amici, mio Dio, di nuovo?

The distinct feature of everything extant is its monotony.

La gente que se afeita se rejuvenece un día todas las mañanas.