Boredom Quotes

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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 sufficient to make one want to die.

~ Michel Houellebecq

... millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

~ Susan Ertz

What kind of life can you have in a house without books?

~ Sherman Alexie

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.

~ David Foster Wallace

I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.

~ Louis C.k.

Boredom can be a lethal thing on a small island.

~ Christopher Moore

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)

~ Terry Pratchett

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 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 bigger than our hearts.

~ Peter Kreeft

Violence is spiritual junk food, and boredom is spiritual anorexia.

~ Peter Kreeft

At the end of the day your ability to connect with your readers comes down to how you make them feel.

~ Benjamin J. Carey

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

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

Happiness changes the way you see the world.

~ Auliq Ice

This life-enhancing, happiness-inducing miracle drug that does, in fact, ruthlessly kill its enemies—you’ve guessed it—is gratitude.

~ Auliq Ice

If this turns to friendship, it only meansThat one of us will suffer.That when we meet after the worst of endings,There will only be this skein of words between us—Most of them for boredom, fewer for loneliness—Rising out of our mutual space of breath, leavingBehind a bluer sky each moment of departure.And one of us will cling on to its blue,Hung on partings like a muted cloud, whileThe other rides on a wing of word away from here.

~ Cyril Wong

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 suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...

~ Alexander Mccall Smith

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

Loneliness tortures many if not most of the elderly more intensely and more frequently than it torments many if not most of us who will never be or have not yet been pushed or pulled into old age.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Boredom is probably more frequent and more tormenting if you do not have sight or hands.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Being bored is the price we pay for not being insane.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is no such thing as a boring person when you are lonely or extremely bored.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes.

~ John Keats

There are 6 reasons that a person does anything: Love, faith, greed, boredom, fear... revenge.

~ Ally Carter

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

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 iPhones and iPads - 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

Boredom is the fear of self.

~ Marie Joséphine De Suin

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

~ Isaac Asimov

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

On building homes for fallen angels:When I was small - I sought a home,a place to go and rest my bones.Then founded something, of my own,I lived among the restless stones.If seeking leads you back to evil,what good is that, I asked a weevil.He said a home is what you make,it can't be real, if it is fake...And if you wait instead of seek,will you find love, or something bleak?I know (myself) for I have found,a beauty, hidden – in a sound.Waiting is boring.And so is exploring.A smile is sometimes all it takes.And then your whole world simply breaks.

~ Will Advise

When you are unemployed, weekends are seven days long.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

When a man plays with your heart it is for one of two reasons: He knows he can or he is undecided.

~ Shannon L. Alder

NOT UNTIL I MET YOUNot until I felt your sunshine,Did I realize that I had been in the shade.Not until I saw all your colors,Did I realize that mine had faded.Not until I heard your dreams,Did I realize that I was still sleeping.And not until I experienced my life with you,Did I realize that I was barelyBreathing.

~ Suzy Kassem

The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.

~ Criss Jami

Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.

~ Emil M. Cioran

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