quotations about boredom
In the beginning was boredom, commonly called chaos. God, bored with boredom, created the earth, the sky, the waters, the animals, the plants, Adam and Eve; and the latter, bored in their turn in paradise, ate the forbidden fruit. God became bored with them and drove them out of Eden.
ALBERTO MORAVIA
La Noia
We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he’s doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won’t, can’t, or doesn’t dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can’t learn, or be intelligent about, what he’s not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere.
PAUL GOODMAN
Growing Up Absurd
I think that the word bored does not get the attention it deserves. We speak of all sorts of terrible things that happen to people, but we rarely speak about one of the most terrible things of all : that is, being bored, being bored alone and, worse than that, being bored together.
ERICH FROMM
Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy
Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?
JOHN BERGER
A Fortunate Man
A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.
ARTHUR C. CLARK
Childhood's End
A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Death", The Essays or Counsels
Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor
Against boredom even the gods struggle in vain.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Antichrist
Boredom is the fear of self.
COMTESSE DIANE
attributed, Words from the Wise: Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said
I think what we call the dulness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could any one find an intense interest in life? And many do.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Boredom is not an end-product, is comparatively rather an early stage in life and art. You’ve got to go by or past or through boredom, as through a filter, before the clear product emerges.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Crack-Up
Boredom's a pastime that one soon acquired
Where you get to the stage, where you're not even tired
Kicking your heels 'til the time comes around
To pick up your bags and head out of town
ELTON JOHN
"Holiday Inn"
Boredom is the conviction that you can't change ... the shriek of unused capacities.
SAUL BELLOW
The Adventures of Augie March
Boredom is my worst enemy. It's killed a lot of my friends, but it won't get me. When I get bored, I go risk my life somewhere.
LARRY NIVEN
Ringworld
Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires -- boredom.
LEO TOLSTOY
Anna Karenina
Boredom is the keynote of poverty -- of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with -- for where there is no money there is no change of any kind.
MOSS HART
Act One
We often forgive those who bore us, but never those whom we bore.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.
GUY DEBORD
The Incomplete Works of the Situationist International
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
"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly", On Photography
The tendency is to blame boredom on the environment. "This town is really dull" or "What a boring speaker." The particular town or speaker is never dull, it is you experiencing the boredom, and you can eliminate it by doing something else with your mind or energy at that moment.
WAYNE W. DYER
Your Erroneous Zones