100 Quotes About Boredom

The word boredom is an interesting one. It means so many different things to so many different people. When we feel it, we tend to feel helpless and hopeless. We wish we could do something about it, but our brain just won’t let us Read more

We can’t just will ourselves out of it, and we can’t always distract ourselves from the feeling. We’re simply stuck. Sometimes we can manage to forget about boredom and go about our day as if nothing is wrong, but most of the time, we can’t ignore it for very long.

We may be able to distract ourselves from boredom by doing something fun or by changing our surroundings, but the problem of boredom is often rooted in a deeper issue that needs to be addressed if we want to find lasting solutions. Here are some of the best quotes on boredom that will help you cope with the feeling and move on to new things.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us...
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Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves? Friedrich Nietzsche
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I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring. Edward Gorey
The absence of the will to live is, alas, not...
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The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. Michel Houellebecq
Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island.
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Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island. Christopher Moore
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What's this about?"" Finally. Interest, " was the only response." If this is one of your tricks.." Like the time Torin had ordered hundreds of blow-up dolls and placed them throughout the fortress, all because Paris had foolishly complained about the lack of female companionship in town. The plastic "ladies" had stared our from every corner, their wide eyes and let-me-suck-you mouths taunting everyone who passed them. Things like that happened when Torin was bored. . Gena Showalter
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The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty. Peter Kreeft
The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but...
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The most total opposite of pleasure is not pain but boredom, for we are willing to risk pain to make a boring life interesting. Peter Kreeft
Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is...
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Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts. Peter Kreeft
Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.
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Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia. Peter Kreeft
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Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more. Andy Warhol
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We all need a technological detox; we need to throw away our phones and computers instead of using them as our pseudo-defence system for anything that comes our way. We need to be bored and not have anything to use to shield the boredom away from us. We need to be lonely and see what it is we really feel when we are. If we continue to distract ourselves so we never have to face the realities in front of us, when the time comes and you are faced with something bigger than what your phone, food, or friends can fix, you will be in big trouble. . Evan Sutter
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Happiness changes the way you see the world. Auliq Ice
This life-enhancing, happiness-inducing miracle drug that does, in fact, ruthlessly...
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This life-enhancing, happiness-inducing miracle drug that does, in fact, ruthlessly kill its enemies–you’ve guessed it–is gratitude. Auliq Ice
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I'm bored with it all. - Last Words Winston S. Churchill
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He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals! Albert Camus
Do you realise that people die of boredom in London...
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Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom... Alexander McCall Smith
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Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform and decay- with maybe they have the power of love yet in their hearts just the same, I just don't know what that word means anymore- All I want is an ice cream cone Jack Kerouac
There are 6 reasons that a person does anything: Love,...
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There are 6 reasons that a person does anything: Love, faith, greed, boredom, fear... revenge. Ally Carter
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There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear..." he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge. Ally Carter
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We all want to spend eternity with God. We just don't want to spend time with Him. We stand and stare from a distance, satisfied with superficiality. We Facebook more than we seek His face. We text more than we study The Text. And our eyes aren't fixed on Jesus. They're fixed on our i Phones and i Pads - emphasis on "i." Then we wonder why God feels so distant. It's because we're hugging the rim. We wonder why we're bored with our faith. It's because we're holding out. We want joy without sacrifice. We want character without suffering. We want success without failure. We want gain without pain. We want a testimony without the test. We want it all without going all out for it. . Mark Batterson
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Boredom is the fear of self. Unknown
This ignorance of what to do with time is the...
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This ignorance of what to do with time is the number one reason why people get bored so easily when alone with nothing to do. Sunday Adelaja
Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.
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Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time. Emil M. Cioran
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To the non-combatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement, but to those who entered the meat grinder itself the war was a netherworld of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all. Eugene B. Sledge
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For Heidegger, boredom is a privileged fundamental mood because it leads us directly into the very problem complex of being and time. Unknown
You are not told that while you try to eliminate...
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You are not told that while you try to eliminate your boredom by playing games and chatting on social media or watching movies and making unnecessary phone calls your life is diminishing into vanity. Sunday Adelaja
I know so much pressure is on all of us...
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I know so much pressure is on all of us to waste time and to just trivialize it. There is so much pressure on us to try to overcome boredom by spending time on frivolities. Sunday Adelaja
There is so much pressure on us to try to...
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There is so much pressure on us to try to overcome boredom by spending time on frivolities. Sunday Adelaja
People who understands how to convert their time into useful...
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People who understands how to convert their time into useful products do not complain of boredom. Sunday Adelaja
Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear
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Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear Daphne Du Maurier
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Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate. Only on occasion--and fear considers this very important--does it want to know how things stand with me. Unknown
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From children to men we cage ourselves in patterns to avoid facing new problems and possible failure after a while men become bored because there are no new problems. Such is life under the fear of failure. Luke Rhinehart
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Do you enjoy your work? Are you happy to get out of bed each morning and dress for the office? If you answered ‘no’ to either of these questions, you are not alone. In a 2014 Conference Board survey, 52 per cent of Americans claimed to be unhappy at work and in a recent CIPD study 23 per cent of Britons claimed to be looking for a new job. In the same survey only about one-third claim to feel engaged with their work. You can see the effects of this in absence, stress and depression. In fact, you can see it in the rush hour in the tired and sad-looking faces of so many commuters. The majority of people I coach are unhappy or dissatisfied with their working lives. They describe their work in so many depressing ways — as ‘boring’, ‘tedious’, ‘mind-numbing’, ‘stressful’, ‘painful’ or even ‘scary’. I hear similar opinions as I travel the world from all types of people no matter what their background, education or choice of career. Nigel Cumberland
When Boredom comes, it is the time during which discovery...
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When Boredom comes, it is the time during which discovery is to be made. That is the time during which real effort (purushartha) can be made. But instead, people push it aside. Dada Bhagwan
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The world, I tell you, is bored -- bored now to the explosive pitch. It's bored by all this incessant war preparation. It is bored by aimless violence, now here, now there. It is tired of hatred politics. It's tired of fresh murders every day. It is not indignant, not excited; it is bored. Bored and baffled.." I don't believe a man begins to know anything of politics until he realises the immense menace of mental fatigue, of world-wide mass boredom. It accumulates. It makes the most frightful convulsions and demoralisation possible. It makes them at last inevitable. Nobody wants fundamental changes in a world where hope and interest prevail. Then people accept their careers, settle down to them, rear children. But throw them out of work, in and out and no sense of security, deprive them of bright expectations, regiment them in masses, underfeed them, bore them with organised mass patriotism, and they begin to seep together into a common morass of discontent and impatience. Almost unconsciously.." They're like that now. H.G. Wells
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   "Fine! Fine! I'm listening..but it's not very interesting! ..   " Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes! "   " What notes?"   " Just write! ..that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life! . Unknown
I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on...
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I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking. Dorothy Parker
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The worst part of being a driver is that you have hours to yourself while waiting for your employer. You can spend this time chitchatting and scratching your groin. You can read murder and rape magazines. You can develop the chauffeur's habit it's a kind of yoga, really of putting a finger in your nose and letting your mind go blank for hours (they should call it the "bored driver's asana"). Aravind Adiga
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And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together–year after year–for this special privilege of being 'bored to death, ' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable'–is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner–or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom–or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room–waiting to be discovered! . Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
Why is there always this twitchiness, when you introduce a...
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Why is there always this twitchiness, when you introduce a man to a woman friend, about whether the man will be bored or put off? Alice Munro
One listens to the murmur of the soul only because...
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One listens to the murmur of the soul only because of boredom. Robert Walser
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Considering Adrian had once gotten bored while reading while reading a particularly long menu, I had a hard time imagining he'd read the Hugo book in any language. Richelle Mead
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Boredom is itself worry. Dada Bhagwan
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To remain lying on thorns (kanta) is called boredom (kantado). Dada Bhagwan
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My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. Arthur Conan Doyle
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Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty. Alison Weir
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Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want. Voltaire
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Doing nothing is the hardest torture that a person can put himself through. For he is always brought face to face with his own self, which demands that he gives account for the sun which he uselessly squanders, for the springs of energy in his organism, the gold of wisdom in the mines of his brains. The masses work, slog, forget. They drink the alcohol of their sweat. Work is a flight from responsibility and God. Since the mystic beliefs have been banned from Europe, pillars of glory have been erected to rationality in order to put something in place of the cross: the French Revolution named its goddess reason, the Russians named their Moloch work. But the machine called Europe is running idle: it fills stomachs with fake bread, builds artificial houses with iron paper, the products are bad, the pay meager, and at the end of the six holy work days is the unholy Sunday which one sleeps through out of fear of the great boredom which is infecting Europe. Sunday, the day of idleness, is nowadays a punishment for Christianity, the cities collapse into soulless ruins, nature is just a backdrop for dusty sports. Doing nothing out of principle, my dear, is nowadays the most violent form of revolt. Iwan Goll
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We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor. Anton Chekhov
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The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect .. and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations. Jean Lorrain
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Nature is interested in only two things–to survive and to reproduce one like itself. Anything you superimpose on that, all the cultural input, is responsible for the boredom of man. So we have varieties of religious experience. You are not satisfied with your own religious teachings or games; so you bring in others from India, Asia or China. They become interesting because they are something new. You pick up a new language and try to speak it and use it to feel more important. But basically, it is the same thing. . U.G. Krishnamurti
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The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom. When indifferent, the eye takes stills, when interested, movies. Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face. Malcolm De Chazal
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The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring. Ada Calhoun
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To understand fully the importance of music, you must try to imagine a world without music! Such a world would be a world of hopelessness and boredom! Mehmet Murat Ildan
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Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word–all the things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities–it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. . Unknown
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We sit in the ruin, each reading a book, or three of us read out of four. Three different voices speak to us. We have taught the children to read again this week. Here, where there is no voice, apart from ours, they are desperate for any other. They will even sing to themselves, sometimes. The boy whistles. He makes his voice croak. He sings the same thing again, but breathing in. A bird echoes the first notes of Vivaldi. Joanna Walsh
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How can I give up stalking when I have a family to feed? Get a job? I don't want to work for you, your work makes me puke, do you understand? This is the way I figure it: if a man works with you, he is always working for one of you, he is a slave and nothing else. And I always wanted to be myself, on my own, so that I could spit at you all, at your boredom and despair. Arkady Strugatsky
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TV families and your own are hard to tell apart, except your isn't interrupted every six minutes by commercials and theirs don't get bogged down into nothingness, a state where nothing happens, no skit, no zany visitors, no outburst on the laugh track, nothing at all but boredom and a lost feeling, especially when you get up in the morning and the moon is still shining and men are making noisy bets on the first tee. John Updike
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...a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom. Arthur C. Clarke
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I would rather die of passion than of boredom. Unknown
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When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols.. Hermann Hesse
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At the same time, eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent. It is an ongoing resistance to the message that marriage is serious, more work than play; and that passion is for teenagers and the immature. We must unpack our ambivalence about pleasure, and challenge our pervasive discomfort with sexuality, particularly in the context of family. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defience. Esther Perel
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...few truly understood how disheartening it was to be cut off from worlds so strange and distant they remained to us fantasies rather than distant realities, too surreal and foreign to be touched. Their minds were fixated on what they knew to be real, unable to create the atmospheres of the nebulous realms that lay just beyond our reach, just beyond the dimming horizon, our celestial limits. Moonshine Noire
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Time' is the illusional domain occupied by the state of boredom. 'Space' is the infinite - reality - experienced by the state of higher creative consciousness. Choose wisely. T.F. Hodge
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Reality can be very boring. Amy Neftzger
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Life is like a story, when all the resolution is resolved, you heave a sigh of relief. Michael Bassey Johnson
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An entrepreneur is born, when a person has more reasons to drive his dreams against his excuses. Sukant Ratnakar
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...I remember a rainy, depressing afternoon when she remarked 'What a pity we can't make love, there's nothing else to do, ' and he agreed that it was and there wasn't. Christopher Isherwood
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Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom. Thomm Quackenbush
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Grandchildren are their grandparents' toys. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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We consume so we never have to answer the hard questions. When we are bored we eat. When we are lonely we watch a movie, read the newspaper, jump on social media. Each time we do we cover up our real emotions and keep throwing another layer of confusion and anxiety on top, making it almost impossible to dig ourselves out of the hole, or at least see which way is up. Evan Sutter
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Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring. Unknown
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My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie. Arthur Conan Doyle
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Nothing speeds brain atrophy more than being immobilized in the same environment: the monotony undermines our dopamine and attentional systems crucial to our brain plasticity. Norman Doidge
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Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself. Elizabeth I
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It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for self-improvement. Thomas Szasz
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I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. (...) Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are. Unknown
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The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes. Saul Steinberg
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If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song. Madeleine LEngle
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Life is just so interesting and complicated and beautiful. Every day, every interaction is different. There’s so much floating around that I would find it really hard to get bored. I’m interested in creating in some way or another, whether it’s photography or writing or just walking through the world. Alejandro Escovedo
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Life wore a man out, wore a man thin. Tomorrow would be a better day. Charles Bukowski
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Boredom and ineffective attempts to escape tedium are the perpetual lot of humankind. Kilroy J. Oldster
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What i'm trying to say is this. A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propogating itself by its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it - even if the person himself wants to stop it. Haruki Murakami
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There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead. Anthon St. Maarten
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Do you not hear the constant victory, in the human footraceof time, slow as fire, sure, and thick and Herculeanaccumulating its volume and adding its sad fiber? Pablo Neruda
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Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying? John Berger
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Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life.. I am destroyed, irretrievably!. Anton Chekhov
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... he preferred being stimulated to being bored. Ruth Harris
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Only boring people are bored in relationships. Osayi Emokpae Lasisi
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Restlessness is usually a sign of changes needing to be made, boredom, or loss of significance. April Mae Monterrosa
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He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish. Gustave Flaubert
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Because my life is empty window of nothingness punctuated by meaningless details of totally mundane non-events. M. Beth Bloom
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Dullness. Only humans could have invented it. What imaginations they had. Terry Pratchett
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Our age has become so mechanical that this has also affected our recreation. People have gotten used to sitting down and watching a movie, a ball game, a television set. It may be good once in a while, but it certainly is not good all the time. Our own faculties, our imagination, our memory, the ability to do things with our mind and our hands—they need to be exercised. If we become too passive, we get dissatisfied. Unknown
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We did everything possible to keep up the spirits of the men, but it was exceedingly difficult because there was nothing for them to do. Theodore Roosevelt
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..people can go to church every week of their lives and never go all in with Jesus Christ. I'm afraid we've cheapened the gospel by allowing people to buy in without selling out. We've made it too convenient, too comfortable. We've given people just enough Jesus to be bored but not enough to feel the surge of holy adrenaline that courses through your veins when you decide to follow Him no matter what, no matter where, no matter when. . Mark Batterson
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Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing. Albert Camus
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...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward. Susan Cain
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The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care. Hugh MacLeod
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My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness. Anthony Swofford