Boring

“ It is part of life. People are all bored. Whatever you do is an escape; and that also bores you. You bore me. Your sitting here bores me. Your talk bores me." (I knew I had asked for it, but I let him continue.) He said, "What do you want me to do? The subject of God or Reality is equally boring. The talk on spirituality or gossip is as ridiculous as anything else to me. Even repeating Ram-nam is painful because it doesn't do any good. You have done it for long. Instead you can have a drink of wine or alcohol and forget for a while, or take a cup of coffee or tea. ”

“ I once knew a gentleman, not a bore quite, but a very clever man, one of great sensibility and excessive sensitiveness, who could never sit still a quarter of an hour together, never converse with you comfortably, or finish a good story, but evermore broke off in the middle with “I am boring you”—“I must run away or I shall be a bore.” ”

“ You ought to put in a kick to the foundry about that. You're wasting time, because the workmen have to run the boring-mill slower to keep from breaking the cutting tool. When the core is true, the borer hits a uniform note—there! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 . ”

“ To work and to dream, to travel, to listen to music, to be in England in the springtime, to read, to give of myself to those who most specially need me—if any there be?—that is what I now call happiness, the rest is merely boredom in varying degree. My only regret is that one has generally to live so long to discover what the constituents of happiness are, or what is worth while and what worthless; what makes you feel that the everyday is a day well spent, and not a day merely got through somehow or other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And there are folk who call modern life prosaic, dull, devoid of romance. Romance! Why, in the older lands there is hardly a foot of road space that has not been trodden at one time or another by youth or maid, in the crucial moment of setting out upon this amazing adventure. There are men and women who drum their fingers on a window-pane after breakfast of a morning, and yawn out their disgust at the empty dullness of life, the vacant boredom of another day. And within a mile of them, as like as not, some one is setting forth--lips compressed, brow knit--upon the great adventure. ”

“ To be bored even is natural enough, if one is bored by, say, forced inaction, or obligatory action of a futile, meaningless kind. But negative boredom; to be uninterested, not because adverse circumstances confine you to this or that barren and uncongenial milieu, but because you see nothing of interest in life as a whole; because life seems to you a dull, empty, or prosaic business--that argues a kind of blindness, a poverty of imagination, which amounts to disease, and, surely, to disease of a most humiliating sort. ”

“ No sooner do they arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could receive a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of human life. ”

“ But what objection can you possibly offer to the state of things among the first-class beings here?"
"Well, to take the first point that occurs to me, it seems to me that you must all be most horribly bored."
"Never," said my host emphatically. "Boredom is the result of living too fast. Those who work too hard or those who enjoy too much must in the intervals of their work or enjoyment be bored. Here we have found by experience the exact pace at which one should live. ”

“ Longwindedness, pomposity, the exaggeration of petty trivialities, the irresistible desire to magnify one's own wretched little achievements, to pose as the little hero of insignificant adventures, and to relate them to the whole world in every dull detail, regardless of the right of other men to get an occasional word in edgewise—these are the true marks of the genuine bore. ”

“ When they are no longer amusing, boredom drives him to seek some new stimulus, which fails him in its turn. Amusement consists in a series of moments without any essential continuity; a purpose which unifies life is one which requires some prolonged activity, and is like building a monument rather than a child's castle in the sand. ”

“ As for me, I do not share your disdain, and I am absolutely ignorant of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE boredom seizes upon me. ”

“ Boredom, in fact, is an acquired distaste—a by-product of the printing-press and steam-engine, which between [83] them have made and kept mankind busier than Solomon in all his wisdom could have imagined. Our arboreal ancestor could neither bore nor be bored. ”

“ I often wonder why that is so? The answer must be physical, since the melody is just the same always—and, if it be really physical, then that surely is the answer to the weariness which always comes with repetition of even the greatest blessings of life in both people as well as things. If only we understood the psychology of boredom we might attain the eternal delight of never being bored, and what we loved once we should always love, until the end of our life's short chapter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know what I am, my dear Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant. ”

“ And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious. ”

“ And how you would be bored,—bored by the ceaseless reiterations night after night, the same arguments growing gradually weaker as the echo grew fainter; bored by the bits of 'Horace' got off by heart to wind up with; bored by the bad jests of witty members; bored by Peel's candor, and Palmerston's petulance; by Cobden's unblushing effrontery, and Hume's tiresome placidity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is the true source of boredom—a continual panting after excitement, in order to have a pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy them. The kind of things people choose for this purpose shows that they are not very particular, as witness the miserable pastimes they have recourse to, and their ideas of social pleasure and conversation: or again, the number of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out of the window. ”

“ No writer of this French romantic school has a word of rescue from the hour of satiety with the things of life,—the hour in which we say, "I take no pleasure in them,"—or from the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding, if perchance such hours should come. ”

“ To know where you are going and by what way is certain boredom; the imagination deflowers the landscape in advance. It works and builds according to its own pleasure; then when you reach your goal all must be overturned; that spoils your disposition; the mind keeps its bent, and the beauty it has fancied prejudices that which it sees ”

“ I am incapable of doing anything whatsoever when I am bored, or when I do not like my surroundings."
"How is it possible for an intellectual man to be bored," said Thérèse, "unless he is in a dungeon, deprived of light and air? Are there no beautiful things to see in this city which enchanted you so the first day, no interesting excursions to take in the neighborhood, no good book to consult, no intelligent people to talk with?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ During the day I would go to my work worn and tired cursing the bewitching night and her empty dreams, but as night came my daily life with its bonds and shackles of work would appear a petty, false, ludicrous vanity. ”

“ Nobody would say that it is burdensome, and yet everybody knows, again, that a large group of evil deeds spring from ennui. It is not the same as idleness; I may be idle without being bored, and I may be bored although I am busy. At best, boredom may be called an attitude which the mind is thrown into because of an unsatisfied desire for different things. ”

“ There thoughts, sentiments, opinions, feelings, actions too, are nothing but agitation in empty space--to amuse life--a sort of superior debauchery, exciting and fatiguing, meaning nothing, leading nowhere. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But ever-growing boredom dominated everything else—the ennui of a man whose mind was unhinged and to whom the incessant idea of death made all action distasteful, so that he dragged himself idly through life on the plea of its nothingness and worthlessness. ”

“ Boredom, U.G.'s problem, getting nothing....
Next he pointed to a lady buying some chocolates in the shop. As she counted her change he watched her every movement. "In that simple activity there is the real wonder of wonders, not your wondrous nature with its trees and all that romantic stuff." He explained that that was why he was never bored: there was always something going there which demanded his complete and total attention. It is only when we feel that there must be something more interesting or meaningful that boredom sets in. ”

“ 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. ”