Ennui

“ And, since all your pleasures are like cobwebs, exceedingly fragile, thin and transparent, ennui penetrates their tissue, and saturates them, just as air penetrates the webs. I believe ennui is really nothing but the desire of happiness, without the illusion of pleasure and the suffering of pain. This desire, we have said, is never completely satisfied, since true pleasure does not exist. So that human life may be said to be interwoven with pain and ennui, and one of these sentiments disappears only to give place to the other. This is the fate of all men, and not of yourself alone. ”

“ Truly, to confess ennui, or make complaint of the dullness of life, is to confess to a sort of creeping paralysis of the mind. To be weary is comprehensible enough. Yes, God knows I can understand the existence of weariness or exhaustion. ”

“ All the days are alike, and all the tasks, and all the faces. It is ennui and death. But I am beginning to be so stupid that I am accommodating myself to this ennui, as if it were a natural thing. Even the deprivation of love does not cause me too much embarrassment, and I endure without too painful struggles this chastity to which I am condemned, or to which, rather, I have condemned myself,—for I have abandoned Monsieur, I have dropped Monsieur finally. ”

“ When this power is present, it never results in good, rarely in anything indifferent, and frequently forbidden fruit ripens slowly in its shadow. Nobody will assert that ennui is the cause of illicit relations, of seduction, of adultery and all the many sins that depend on it—from petty misappropriations for the sake of the beloved, to the murder of the unloved husband. But ennui is for the criminal psychologist a sign that the woman was unsatisfied with what she had and wanted something else. From wishing to willing, from willing to asking, is not such a great distance. ”

“ There is nothing in the life of women, who have the misfortune to have nothing to do, that may not be explained by one single word—loneliness, ennui. Ennui, which is supposed to be a languishing and negative disposition of the mind, is, for a nervous woman, a positive evil impossible to support. It grasps its prey, and gnaws it to the core: whoever suspends the torment for a moment is considered a saviour. ”

“ Dark and desolate beyond speech was his world; dark and empty of all save the eyes of the hound Ennui; and by day and night it watched him, fixing him with dull and unrelenting eyes. Sometimes these acute strainings of his consciousness lasted only between entering his chambers late at night and going to bed; and fearful of the sleepless hours, every sensation exaggerated by the effect of the insomnia, he sat in dreadful commune with the spectre of his life, waiting for the apparition to leave him. ”

“ It is pleasant to turn our consideration from the ennui which is inevitable, and consequently tragic, to the ennui which is accidental, and consequently diverting. The first is part of ourselves, from which there is no escape; the second is, as a rule, the contribution of our neighbors, and may be eluded if fortune and our own wits favor us. ”

“ I need not explain this to you, and to many I could not explain it; for I assure you the excess of pity which has been lavished on my husband and me, for having been four days wholly dependant on each other’s society for amusement, has raised in me many an inward smile, as being (while intended for politeness) the very essence of rudeness. ‘Dear me, so you were four days in that terrible way. How you must have suffered from ennui, &c. &c.’ In vain I tell people that I am not subject to ennui, &c. &c.; they will continue to pity, till I am more tired of them than they could be of retirement. ”

“ This death-in-life comes sometimes to the most earnest men, to those whose life is fullest of energy and excitement It is the reaction, the weariness which they name Ennui,—foul fiend that eats fastest into the heart's core, that shakes with surest hand the sands of life, that makes the deepest wrinkles on the cheeks and deadens most surely the lustre of the eyes. ”

“ My amiability, which is in many cases the result of indifference; my indulgency, which is sincere enough, and is due to the fact that I see clearly how unjust men are to one another; my conscientious habits, which afford me real pleasure, and my infinite capacity for enduring ennui, attributable perhaps to my having been so well inoculated by ennui during my youth that it has never taken since, are all to be explained by the circle in which I lived, and the profound impressions which I received. ”

“ To suffer from ennui implies so deep a knowledge of life, and a corresponding satiety of its pleasures, that all the ordinary routine events of existence have no longer any power to interest the mind. Ennui is not weariness nor tediousness, as described in the dictionary; neither is it boredom, for the latter differs therefrom in its not necessarily being the outcome of a high degree of civilization, which ennui certainly is. ”

“ The incarnation of ennui to which they are victims, joined to the need they feel of getting a divorce from themselves, produces that passion for moving about, for being somewhere else than where they are, which distinguishes their species,—and also that of all beings devoid of sensitiveness, and those who have missed their destiny, or who suffer by their own fault. ”

“ So as to make up for the irremediable loss that you have made of your soul, I shall give you back the stake you ought to have gained, if your fate had been fortunate — that is to say, the possibility of solacing and of conquering, during your whole life, this bizarre affection of ennui, which is the source of all your maladies and of all your miseries. Never a desire shall be formed by you that I will not aid you to realize; you will reign over your vulgar equals ”

“ In short, I should say one so circumstanced as you are would die of ennui; that his mind, constantly thrown back upon itself, must, sooner or later, result in a weariness even worse than death itself. ”

“ What’s a man to do to keep himself from ennui? For instance, I got up this morning at ten, with Selwyn visited Lady Dapperwit while she was drinking coffee in her nightrail, talked a vast deal of scandal with her, strolled in the park with Fritz, from there to White’s in a sedan, two hours at lunch, and an hour with you for the good of my soul. ”

“ It is generally thought that a sad ennui pervades the life of most of those old ladies in England to whom fate has denied the usual cares and burdens of the world, or whose cares and burdens are done and gone. ”

“ I can only say that it is deeply absorbing; that it pays, so to speak, a large interest on a small investment of trouble, and that it has given me a sense of perspective in human things which I never had before. The difficulty in writing about it is to abstain from platitudes; I can only say that it has revealed to me how much more emotion and experience go to make up a platitude than I ever suspected before in my ambitious days.
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Ennui is, after all, the one foe that we all fear; and in arranging our life, the most serious preoccupation is how to escape it. ”

“ What ennobles it, what gives it meaning, is the courageous attack, the putting of heart into work, the facing of monotony, the finding of the zest of accomplishment. There is no such thing as "menial" work; the washing of dishes and the carting away of garbage are just as necessary and important as the running of a railway or the making of laws. The real horror is the dead weight of ennui, the aimlessness and fruitlessness of a life that has done nothing and has nothing to do. ”

“ Worse than overcrowded rooms at night, and disgusting food, and troublesome dress, has been the curse of the soldier,—the dullness of his life. People in ordinary life who pine for want of something to do and to care about, are subject to ailments which are called “the maladies of ennui.” ”

“ This species of ennui, of which the sufferings begin in middle-life and often last to extreme old age, (as they have no tendency to shorten existence,) is far more pitiable than that from which the girl or the young woman suffers before her matron-life begins. Then hope is always present to cheer her on to endurance; and there is, besides, at that time, a consciousness of power and energy to change the habits of life into such as would enable her to brave all future fears of ennui. ”

“ They would kill me if I did not resolutely subdue them, for whether for good or ill my heart is still young. Of what use are desires when one can no longer satisfy them? I write to kill ennui, and I take a pleasure in writing. ”

“ To the influence of ennui must be traced the passion for strong excitement. When life has become almost stagnant, when the ordinary course of events has been unable to excite any strong interest, ennui assumes a terrific power over the mind, and clamours for emotion, though that emotion is to be purchased by scenes of horror and of crime. ”

“ It must be the same with the persons who have passed through the abominations of the honeymoon. They do not dare to undeceive their neighbor. And I did the same.
“The felicities of the honeymoon do not exist. On the contrary, it is a period of uneasiness, of shame, of pity, and, above all, of ennui,—of ferocious ennui. It is something like the feeling of a youth when he is beginning to smoke. He desires to vomit; he drivels, and swallows his drivel, pretending to enjoy this little amusement. The vice of marriage . ”

“ Now, nothing saps a man’s temper like ennui. The cranky, peevish people one meets with would be excellent folk, if they only had something to do. As for us, I’ll venture to say two men more disposed to go pleasantly down the current of life it were hard to meet with ”

“ But when the primary motives of human conduct have failed of their effect, and the mind has become a prey to listlessness, the career, then pursued, let it be what it may, is to be ascribed to the pain of ennui. When the mind gnaws upon itself, we have ennui ”

“ Character is destiny, if the character is strong, but circumstances are destiny, if the character is weak. It is the aim of her novels to show how certain traits of character, as indecision, pride, love of luxury, indolence, lead to misfortune, and how these dangerous traits may be overcome.
Notwithstanding her moral, her plots are never hackneyed and never repeated. They are drawn from life and have the variety of life. In the story of Ennui, there is the twice-told tale of the nurse's son substituted for the real heir ”

“ I said, "why do you suppose I bought that pig?"
"Ennui."
[Pg 4]
"A man doesn't buy pigs to escape from ennui!"
"You can't predict what a man will do to escape it," he said, smiling. "The trouble with you is that you're been here too long ”

“ I., it appears that he died seised of lands in Blackley as well as Salford.
Is there any evidence to connect him with this hall, as the place of his residence?
A Jesuit.
Jesus College, Cambridge.
Ennui.—What is our nearest approach to a correct rendering of this expression? Some English writer (Lady Morgan, I believe) has defined it "mental lukewarmness:" but, if it be true, as La-Motte Houdart says, that—
"L'ennui naquit un jour de l'uniformité." ”

“ Now I might tell you many more stories of Envy—as that of the man who envied his neighbour who had the ceiling of his dining-hall covered with gold pieces, and at last did his own in like fashion; but as he was not rich, he used gilded lead, and one day as he was carving the meat, down fell a false piece of eight and killed him; or the lady who envied her brother’s wife for her small waist, and drew in her own so tightly that she died; or the man who out of malice bore witness to a forgotten crime of his neighbour’s, and so discovered one of his own for which he ended his life in prison ”

“ What was killing me, I realise now, was a cowardly, barren envy. Envy for me was indolence, despair, death. Envy ought to be action, hope, and life. In my impotent rage I only knew how to curse myself, others, and my own nonentity. Envy ought to give me the desire and strength to come out of my obscurity, and I will come out of it."
"Good! good! dear, brave child!" exclaimed David, in his turn, pressing Frederick to his breast. "Oh, I was certain I could cure you! An easy task with a generous nature like yours, so long cherished by the most admirable of mothers. ”

“ And Envy is cowardly, and dare not openly show its face, but murmurs and grumbles and complains and detracts privately; and these secret mutterings of Envy are termed the Devil’s Pater Noster, though the Devil never had a Pater Noster, but lewd folk so call this sour whispering of Envy.
And from Envy come rancour, and grudging, and bitterness of heart, and discord, and false witness, and malignity.
And it is the most difficult sin of all to fight, for it goes generally cloaked in the semblance of some virtue. ”

“ Their littleness, the thought that their individual, mysterious life should have risen, like twin springs, from his and from Enid's love, had thrilled him with pity and wonder and an aching tenderness which once or twice had rekindled passion only to die almost at once under the stifling commonplaceness of their daily life. ”

“ As autumn approached, with faint notice on his part, his anger and resentment retreated, leaving in their wake a gentle stir of regret and remorse. Imperceptibly, he grew physically weary; a strange sensation of loneliness and isolation enveloped him. A species of timidity came upon him; he felt an unhappy remoteness from people, and began to edge away from life. ”

“ Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody seriously confess to envy? ”