quotations about boredom
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Plague
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
We often forgive those who bore us, but never those whom we bore.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
letter, Sep. 10, 1918
When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
On Grief and Reason
Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.
JOSEPH BRODSKY
On Grief and Reason
All our life passes in this way: we seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces.
BLAISE PASCAL
Pensees
Boredom is nothing but the experience of a paralysis of our productive powers.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that is, work that is designed to quiet no need other than that for working in general.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human