Borer

“ Yes, boredom was the prevailing note of this concert at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Beneath that forced admiration, that expression of simulated ecstasy which belongs to the worldly side of the sincerest woman, the look of boredom rose higher and higher; there soon appeared unmistakable signs that dimmed the brilliant smile and shining eyes and changed completely their charming, languishing poses, like the motion of birds upon the branches or when sipping water drop by drop. ”

“ These they scoff at, hate, flee as from a pestilence, yet they alone preserve for these things a secret admiration and perfect confidence! And you ask what influence has boredom? Ah, my dear girl, there are just two kinds of people in the world: those who don’t know how to bore themselves, and who are nobodies; and those who know how to bore themselves, and who are somebody—besides those who know how to bore others!
Jeanne. ”

“ I wish you, who are a French authority, would send me word whether it is not peculiar to him to call a digression, or a long story, or a tiresome sentence une bourre, the evident derivation of our bore. I always wonder why we talk of such a thing being a bore—not at the sentiment. A dumb man marching would be driven into saying ‘What a bore,’ but at the expression. ”

“ At one period of his life, our bore had an illness. It was an illness of a dangerous character for society at large. Innocently remark that you are very well, or that somebody else is very well; and our bore, with a preface that one never knows what a blessing health is until one has lost it, is reminded of that illness, and drags you through the whole of its symptoms, progress, and treatment. Innocently remark that you are not well, or that somebody else is not well, and the same inevitable result ensues. ”

“ But 'tis the most infernal bore,
Of all the bores I know,
To have a friend who's lost his heart
A short time ago.
Whene'er we steam it to Blackwall,
Or down to Greenwich run,
To quaff the pleasant cider cup,
And feed on fish and fun;
Or climb the slopes of Richmond Hill,
To catch a breath of air:
Then, for my sins, he straight begins
To rave about his fair.
Oh, 'tis the most tremendous bore,
Of all the bores I know,
To have a friend who's lost his heart
A short time ago. ”

“ Boredom, actual boredom—a perseverance that is dead to all shame—a persistance that no modesty rebukes—a steady resolve to push forward, wins its way socially as well as strategically; and even the folding-doors of court saloons fly open before its magic sésame. ”

“ Greenheart wood is of a dark-green colour, sap wood and heart wood being so much alike that they can with difficulty be distinguished from each other. The heart wood is one of the most durable of all timbers, and its value is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is proof against the ravages of many marine borers which rapidly destroy piles and other submarine structures of most other kinds of wood available for such purposes. In the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, there are two pieces of planking from a wreck submerged during eighteen years on the west coast of Scotland. ”

“ IT is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have the pleasure and honour of enumerating among our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and has so many traits (as it appears to us) in common with the great bore family, that we are tempted to make him the subject of the present notes. May he be generally accepted!
Our bore is admitted on all hands to be a good-hearted man. He may put fifty people out of temper, but he keeps his own. ”

“ We conjugate the reflective verb ‘to be Bored,’ in all moods and tenses; not in the light and airy way of townsfolk, when they trivially observe they were ‘bored at such a party last night,’ or decline to be ‘bored by going to hear such a preacher on Sunday morning,’ but sadly and in sober earnest, as men who recognize that boredom is a chronic disease from which they have no hope of permanent relief. ”

“ They love to go (which they do naturally) into a slow argument on a previously exhausted subject, and to contradict each other, and to wear the hearers out, without impairing their own perennial freshness as bores. It improves the good understanding between them, and they get together afterwards, and bore each other amicably. Whenever we see our bore behind a door with another bore, we know that when he comes forth, he will praise the other bore as one of the most intelligent men he ever met. ”

“ It is true the wanderer often feels bored, even in beautiful places. I am bored some days every year, no matter where I spend them, and I shall always be. I get tired of this world and want another. That is a common feeling, if not often analysed.
There is, however, another boredom, that of the weariness of the body, or its satiety of country air; the longing for the pleasures of the town, the tides of the soul attracted by the moon of habit. The tramp also confesses to that boredom. ”

“ LA M. These annoyances are mingled with the pleasures of life. All goes not, sir, exactly as we wish it. Heaven wills that here below everyone should meet bores; without that, men would be too happy.
ER. But of all my bores the greatest is Damis, guardian of her whom I adore, who dashes every hope she raises, and has brought it to pass that she dares not see me in his presence. ”

“ The internal condition is determinative, for things that are boresome to one may be very interesting to another. A collection, a library, a lecture, are all tedious and boresome by transposition of the emotional state to the objective content, and in this way the idea of boredom gets a wide scope. We, however, shall speak of boredom as an emotional state. We find it most frequently among girls, young women, and among{325} undeveloped or feminine men as a very significant phenomenon. ”

“ A state of divine revelation wherein for a single moment we are carried by the giant of Eternal Inutility to the abysms and summits of the perpetual Nix. (The word boredom comes from Bore, a tired son of Noah. After the subsidence of the waters, Bore wandered about the earth, yawning and gaping and stretching, for at that time malaria oozed from many stagnant pools. Finally, absolutely exhausted, Bore, being afraid to be down on the damp and slimy soil, rested on the seventh day on his own bean, hence boredom.) ”

“ What can the silly impertinent fellow mean? thought I; but the ale was now before me, and I hastened to drink, for my weakness was great, and my mind was full of dark thoughts, the remains of the indescribable horror of the preceding night. It may kill me, thought I, as I drank deep—but who cares? anything is better than what I have suffered. ”

“ In those long days of trench warfare and stationary lines it was boredom that was the worst malady of the mind; a large, overwhelming boredom to thousands of men who were in exile from the normal interests of life and from the activities of brain-work; an intolerable, abominable boredom, sapping the will-power, the moral code, the intellect; a boredom from which there seemed no escape except by death, no relief except by vice, no probable or possible change in its dreary routine. ”

“ One felt that in undermining its joys one was making a breach in the defences of an ancient hypocrisy. Still more, one resented the steady boredom of the day—the boredom of a day from which one had been led to expect larger ecstasies than a surfeit of dishes and the explosion of crackers can give. ”

“ A dun is a bore, and a sermon is a bore, and so forth; but the greatest of all possible bores, in whatever spelling, is a husband, a bore at night, a bore in the morning, and, in short, one general universal bore. ”

“ Our bore is always ready with him. We have known our bore to fall upon an intelligent young sojourner in the wilderness, in the first sentence of a narrative, and beat all confidence out of him with one blow of his brother. He became omniscient, as to foreign policy, in the smoking of those pipes with Mehemet Ali. The balance of power in Europe, the machinations of the Jesuits, the gentle and humanising influence of Austria, the position and prospects of that hero of the noble soul who is worshipped by happy France, are all easy reading to our bore’s brother. ”

“ I do not remember that you have given any special attention to the use of bores in the moral government of the world in your book on 'The Problem of Human Destiny.' I admit their utility as a class: they serve a most excellent purpose; but whether we are to be annoyed with them in the next world is the doubt. Some of them are most worthy people, and capital Christians, and cannot be kept out of Paradise ”

“ To begin with, it is bored. With itself, with its neighbor, with all things. It has lived hard and swiftly, the roadhouse crowd, and now it is burned out and bored; and so it cries for White Rock and cracked ice, and mixes itself illegitimate drinks, and downs them, and mixes more, and downs them . . . that it may forget how bored it is, that it may become merry and loud and hysterical . ”

“ Our bore, in a similar manner, being in Italy, made a discovery of a dreadful picture, which has been the terror of a large portion of the civilized world ever since. We have seen the liveliest men paralysed by it, across a broad dining-table. ”

“ Bores may be met with at all times of the day, but none bores so blightingly as he who bores at breakfast. Who more completely spoils a déjeuner than the hideous male shown above who absolutely refuses to pick up his cues in the sweet little matutinal dialogue? ”

“ A bore is said to be "one who talks about himself when you want to talk about yourself!" which is superficially true enough, but a bore might more accurately be described as one who is interested in what does not interest you, and insists that you share his enthusiasm, in spite of your disinclination. To the bore life holds no dullness; every subject is of unending delight. ”

“ Another suggestion; proper system in the management and control of one's time demands that none of it be absorbed by trifles or triflers; and so every librarian must indispensably know how to get rid of bores. One may almost always manage to effect this without giving offense, and at the same time without wasting any time upon them, which is the one thing needful. The bore is commonly one who, having little or nothing to do, inflicts himself upon the busy persons of his acquaintance, and especially upon the ones whom he credits with knowing the most—to wit, the librarians. ”

“ For after five winters in New York and a couple in London you can't help bumping into the Bohemian type, not to mention an occasional collision with 'em up and down the Continent. When they're female they always seem to wear the wrong kind of corsets. And when they're male they watch themselves in the mirrors, or talk so much about themselves that you haven't a chance to talk about yourself—which is really the completest definition of a bore, isn't it? ”

“ There be of both kinds;—the female frequently plumed, the male-military plumed, helmed, or crested, and whisker-faced, hairy, Dandy bore, ditto, ditto, ditto.—There are bores unplumed, capped, or hatted, curled or uncurled, bearded and beardless.
The bore is not a ruminating animal,—carnivorous, not sagacious—prosing—long-winded—tenacious of life, though not vivacious. The bore is good for promoting sleep; but though he causeth sleep in others, it is uncertain whether he ever sleeps himself; as few can keep awake in his company long enough to see. ”

“ But I am by no means sure you are not the best friend of the two; for I doubt, do you see, whether I should have had the fifty pounds but for you. You persuaded me to give up that silly drink they call sherry, and drink ale; and what was it but drinking ale which gave me courage to knock down that fellow Hunter—and knocking him down was, I verily believe, the turning point of my disorder. God don’t love them who won’t strike out for themselves ”

“ It is very difficult duly to delineate a bore in a narrative, for the very reason that he is a bore. A tale must aim at condensation, but a bore acts in solution. It is only on the long-run that he is ascertained. ”

“ But a sense of boredom begins to creep into our hearts at the end of the second evening, which, if there were not the pleasure of bidding him "Good-bye" on the morrow to keep our spirits up, would end in exasperation to be fought down and a yawn to be suppressed. ”

“ Cut the booze and go to work.' 'Work won't do me any good,' I said. 'I've tried it, and it bored me worse than the other thing. When I'm bored, I naturally reach for a drink.' (There's a great truth in that, you know, Carty, if the temperance people would only grab it: boredom and booze —cause and effect.) ”

“ Her fingers often lay idle in the bowl of peas, for though her task relieved the sweltering boredom which had weighed on her all day, every now and then a great lassitude would sweep over her, slacking her muscles, slacking her thoughts, till she drooped into a vague stagnation of sorrow. ”

“ If he could contact the person somehow, he or she could be reached at the beginning of each cycle and would be a tangible individual to help him fight boredom—not a voice on the telephone, an image on the TV screen or a tiny dot of a person fourteen floors below his window. ”

“ Somewhere inside me there's a—a leaven of New England thrift that queers the game. Why, hang it, mother, I can't even loaf decently now! I get bored to death about every twenty-four hours. Sometimes I wish to Heaven I'd been born poor! ”

“ But if this struggle comes to an end, his unemployed forces become a burden to him; and he has to set to work and play with them,—to use them, I mean, for no purpose at all, beyond avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom, to which he is at once exposed. It is the upper classes, people of wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom. ”