Monotone

“ Of the desolation of mind into which the rejection of my appeal plunged me, I can give no account, for I retain no distinguishing image. All colours disappear in the night, and despair has no diary,—monotony is her essence and her curse. Hours have I walked in the garden, without retaining a single impression but that of the sounds of my footsteps;—thought, feeling, passion, and all that employs them,—life and futurity, extinct and swallowed up. ”

“ When variety entirely destroys the pleasure proceeding from uniformity and repetition, and when novelty counteracts and shuts out the pleasure arising from old habits and customs, they oppose too much the indolence of our disposition: the mind therefore can bear with pleasure but a small portion of novelty at a time. The main part of the work must be in the mode to which we have been used. An affection to old habits and customs I take to be the predominant disposition of the mind, and novelty comes as an exception: where all is novelty, the attention, the exercise of the mind is too violent. ”

“ The outlines become blurred, the vision fades, the cries and sighs faint away ... and nothingness, nothingness encircles me.... The monotony of empty space, of inert thought, of dreamy lassitude! and more than all the monotony of an idle pen and lifeless paper that lacks the life of thought! Ah! How varied are the shapes of nothingness, and how, in its dark and silent way, it mocks creatures of my stamp! ”

“ Just so it is with our admiration of character; there must exist bold and distinctive traits, good or bad, to arouse for it unusual regard. A monotony of character or of feeling is as wearisome as a monotony of sound or scenery. ”

“ It is monotony which eats the heart out of joy, destroys the buoyancy of the spirit, and turns hope to ashes; it is monotony which saps the vitality of the emotions; depletes the energy of the will, and finally turns the miracle of daily existence into dreary commonplace. And monotony has its roots, not in our conditions, but in ourselves. ”

“ Monotony is not altogether a horrible or hateful fact. Most of us want some monotony in our day. We want a rhythm and a certain recurrence in it, whereby our work comes to seem familiar to us and we do somewhere near the same thing each day. There is rest in that. But how much [Pg 147] we need is individual; the dose of monotony, the amount that is good for you and for me is limited. People often get too much, and when they get too much, then it is a moral poison. One of the most appalling things, I think, is its effect upon the mind. ”

“ The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment. ”

“ It is doubtful if, in later life, she will herself look back upon the many days so filled to repletion with exacting, though interesting, tasks, as other than a dead level, for constant repetition of a thing, no matter how gripping it may be, produces a monotony. ”

“ The tiresome routine of my daily life, its dull, unvarying monotony, began to wear into my soul, and I ceased either to think over the past or speculate on the future, but would sit for hours long in a moody revery, actually unconscious of everything. ”

“ We should try to cultivate monotony much more than we do. We work ourselves up into excitement, when we should rather compose ourselves into content. We should trace and retrace our steps. No path appears so short as that which is well known. ”

“ As a corollary to the need of excitement and its pleasure is the reaction to monotony. Monotony is one of the most dreaded factors in the life of man. The internal resources of most of us are but small; we can furnish excitement and interest from our own store for but a short time, and there then ensues an intense yearning for something or somebody that will take up our attention and give a direction to our thought and action. ”

“ Watch the faces of people thinking as they travel alone in cars,—and rarely does one see a happy face. The lines of the face droop and sighs are frequent. Monotony and melancholy are not far apart; monotony and a restless seeking for excitement are almost synonymous. Of course, what constitutes monotony will differ in the viewpoint of each person, for some are so constituted and habituated (for habit is a great factor) that it takes but few stimuli to arouse a well-sustained interest, and others need or think they need many things, a constantly changing set of circumstances for pleasure. ”

“ This mixture of idleness and change—of solitude and independence—soothed his disturbed mind. He was given up to endless reverie, now engrossed by melancholy and moral trains of thought; now possessed by images wild, terrible, or gay. He knew no language, and could express nothing that he felt—all was confused and vague, and mingled with violent transports of grief and despair. He spoke to no one; and his taciturn, self-devouring misery irritated him almost to madness. ”

“ MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Well, you ought to thank God that you've nothing worse than annoyances!— (A pause.) Some of us, you know, are worse off than that! (A pause.) I'm telling you that I need to attach myself in my imagination to the lives other people lead. But—in my peculiar way—without pleasure—without any real interest, even—in such a way, in fact—yes, just so—in such a way, precisely, as to sense the annoyances they encounter. ”

“ And, besides, the monotony wanted not for attractions: an existence always uniformly calm resembles the man who peacefully sleeps without dreaming, or those melodies composed of a few words, but which charm us with so much sweetness. Perhaps there is nothing which leaves more agreeable souvenirs than this monotony of existence—this successive enchainment of days which have nothing to distinguish one from that which precedes, or from that which follows it. ”

“ Day followed day in charming monotony, for, whatever “gay worldlings” may think, monotony is as full of charm as a dreamy summer afternoon. “Happy is the country that has no history,” says the voice of wisdom, and the same remark may be made with even more truth of the individual. ”

“ but I feel monotony and death to be almost the same." ”

“ Nothing seems so short in retrospect as monotony; the number, the variety, the interest of the events which occupy us, making our hours pass glibly and flowingly, will still suggest to the mind the impressions of a longer period than when the daily routine of our occupations assumes a character of continued uniformity. ”

“ Elles accusent la monotonie de leur existence d’être la cause de ce vague malaise; la vraie cause est ailleurs, elle est dans la fadeur intolérable, non d’une vie dépourvue d’événements et d’aventures, mais d’une vie dont on n’entrevoit pas la raison ni le but. ”

“ Monotony is the ruling characteristic,—monotony of beauty, monotony of desolation, monotony even of variety. The glorious blue overhead is monotonous: as for the thermometer, it paces up and down within the narrowest limits, like a prisoner in his cell, or a meadow-lark hopping to and fro in a seven-inch cage. The plan and aspect of the buildings are monotonous, and so is the way of life of those who inhabit them. Fortunately, the sun does rise and set in Southern California: otherwise life there would be at an absolute stand-still, with no past and no future. ”

“ Well-defined monomanias are not communicated; but when the madness consists in a distorted way of looking at everything, and when it lurks under all discussions, then it can and does injure the minds of those who live with it. Your patience is sublime, but will it not end in disordering you? For your sake, for that of your children, change your system with the count. ”

“ No experienced man looks upon them as personally directed, or remembers [Pg 20] them when the crisis is past. What has really to be guarded against is the effect of monotony in any form, even the irritating repetition of some small unconscious personal trick. ”

“ Their lives are monotonous,--too much so for the best health of either mind or body. If they dreamed how much this monotony could be broken and cheered by the constant habit of talking with each other, they would grasp at the slightest chance of a conversation. ”

“ In order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed. ”

“ I feel an impulse to be at work, but am kept idle by the sense of being unsettled with removals to be gone through, over and over again, before I can shut myself into a quiet room of my own, and turn the key. I need monotony too, an eventless exterior life, before I can live in the world within. ”

“ But when it is a question of monomania (and I think that my intense distrust amounted to monomania) , wise and sensible ideas are the last that ever come into our minds.
It was all in vain, then, that I had laughed at those wicked stories that had been constructed from the most ordinary occurrences. Without for a moment reflecting on my inconsequence, I was about to do what was a thousand times worse than forge a slander. I was about to calumniate that sacred thing, grief; to profit by what I had accidentally discovered. ”

“ But in what walk in life is there not monotony? The doctor gives monotonous hours to the treatment of petty ailments, the minister finds that his parishioners are "a most monotonous lot of sinners," the lawyer's work is mostly routine of a not very exhilarating kind, and the business-man spends most of his time in the transaction of uninspiring details. ”

“ I had a happy dream that my husband was dead, my poor husband who had done nothing to me, and that I was free, free, as large as the world!
"It could not last. I couldn't go on forever hating monotony so much. Oh, that emptiness, that monotony! Of all the gloomy things in the world monotony is the darkest, the gloomiest. In comparison night is day.
"Religion? It is not with religion that we fill the emptiness of our days, it is with our own life. ”

“ The invariable monotony of landscapes, faces and thoughts, become an intensely acute suffering. The meanness of the universe astonishes and revolts me, the littleness of all things fills me with disgust, and I am overwhelmed by the platitude of human beings. ”

“ In like manner, monotony, seclusion, lack of variety and of social stimulus lower the tone of humanity, drive to sensual pleasures and secret vices, and nourish a miserable pack of mean and degrading immoralities, of which scandal, gossip, backbiting, tale-bearing are the better examples. ”

“ Shall I less enjoy heaven and earth, or thought or action, or man's more material luxuries of food or sleep— the common and the cheap desires of all? Arouse thee, then, O heart within me! many and deep emotions of sorrow or of joy are yet left to break the monotony of existence. ”

“ It is what redeems everything else from monotony. It glorifies what is insignificant, and dignifies what is mean, and lifts what is low, and turns the poor little business steps of every day into rounds of Heaven's golden ladder. ”

“ In its effect on its victim, monotony is actually deadly—it will drive the bloom from the cheek and the lustre from the eye as quickly as sin, and often leads to viciousness. The worst punishment that human ingenuity has ever been able to invent is extreme monotony—solitary confinement. Lay a marble on the table and do nothing eighteen hours of the day but change that marble from one point to another and back again, and you will go insane if you continue long enough. ”

“ In the monotonous life of "society" we are brought in contact with the same kind of people, or people whose life effort is to appear the same—all continually engaged in doing the same thing. If any new idea jars the monotony, off rushes the whole crowd after it—bicycle, golf, or ping-pong—till they have made it monotonous, too. ”

“ Do you say that you must have excitement, something to break the dull monotony of existence? Well, if you wish to break the monotony of food, you need not take arsenic, nor break the monotony of drink by prussic acid. Guard yourself just here; the love of excitement ruins thousands. ”

“ Monotony, however luxurious, is not less irksome because it is easy. A hardworking woman would have rest to look forward to, but I hadn't even that, although I was always wearied to death—as tired of my idleness or purposeless occupations as anybody could possibly be by work. I think if you will put yourself in my place, you will not wonder at me, nor at any woman under the circumstances who, secure of herself and her position, varies the monotony of her life with an occasional escapade as one puts sauce into soup to relieve the insipidity. Deplore it if you will, but don't wonder at it ”

“ The monotony of mundane existence is in tune with the scene, and as all that is pleasant of the year slowly vanishes, we dream and moralize in a regretful way, which is not discontent.
Nature is dying, but will live again anon. ”

“ The routine and monotony of daily toil become glorified in the light that now falls athwart your vision. You learn to substitute for your personal feeling the common impersonal element felt by the many. ”