Quotes about boredom

Angels in the house always die in the books they preside over because early ascension into heaven is their reward—and because their goodness makes them boring.

People soon get tired of things that aren't boring, but not of what is boring.

“Quelius—you’re nuts—did you know that?”

“Of course. That’s quite all right. Better embarked on an exciting insanity than moldering away in dull normality. One thing you can’t deny: we psychotics lead interesting lives.”

Only very young soldiers and head-cases object to boredom in war-time.

Could one die from boredom, she wondered? From complete, oppressive, crushing, unmitigated boredom, the likes of which made all other boredom seem like ecstasy’s sweet thrilling embrace? And in such a case, if one happened to have a life insurance policy, would it pay?

I had the evening to kill, but it didn’t want to die and fought back.

I would rather do a dangerous job than a job that makes me comatose with boredom.

Boredom on social occasions is an inescapable hazard for the over-educated, and for the over-ambitious it must be endured.

Anything that lives forever gets bored.

He liked slim books which he could slip into his overcoat pocket and leave there unread for months. What was the point of a book if you couldn’t carry it around with you as a theoretical defence against boredom?

But among the aristocrats whose existence could be lengthily prolonged into three or four hundred spans, boredom came to be the killer, a bizarre running down, a sort of decline and decay, nonphysical but fatal.

Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dullness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.