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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To escape from monotony, to get away from the life of mere routine and habits, to feel that we are alive—with more of surprise and wakefulness in our existence. To have less of the gelid, torpid, tortoise-like existence. ”

“ It is the system that does it, the long-continued, soul-and-mind-destroying monotony, the long, silent nights in which for hours men lie awake thinking, thinking, thinking, driven in upon themselves and to be their own selves’ only companion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ahead of her loomed, only dimly discerned as yet, the ordeal of strenuous monotony; the deadly-dull, prolonged grind wherein endurance, as it hardens, is subjected to a constantly harsher strain, until the soul revolts as, in the earlier stage, the body had rebelled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He, who had found the ways of modern society dull to the last point of excruciating boredom, was not aware of any monotony in the daily round of the hours, which, laden with simple duties and pleasures, came and went softly and slowly like angel messengers stepping gently from one heaven to another. ”

“ There are both the joy of the abundant life, the craving for new experiences, and the sense of reality, and also the disorganization of interests and motives, the stress and fatigue and monotony which prepare the mind [34] for culmination in dramatic events. There is, in a word, a deep stirring of all the forces that make for progress and expansion, and also conditions that disorganize the individual and the social life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everything presented is lost in a drab monotony that gives nothing back. But others reflect, or give back in varied lights, all that strikes upon them. The dull make no response; the bright flash back the fact with a changed quality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ I am not sure whether I like or dislike these frequent changes; on the whole I think I like them; for they break up the monotony, and then one does get so totally glued to the manner of school life: there is no better name for the cohesive power that makes us one household for the time. ”

“ To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. ”

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

“ As it is, there is a tedious monotony in all these things. Our houses are all made and furnished too nearly alike; and so of all our affairs. A fashionable sameness, somber and dull, spreads over our whole outward life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How dreary a monotony must pervade those people's lives who, from indolence or timidity, drive in their carriages straight to the doors of friends whom they have got to know without having first dreamed of knowing them, without ever daring, on the way, to stop and examine what arouses their desire. ”

“ On the contrary, the high tension, the rigid routine, the gray monotony of modern life insistently call for moments of organic relief, though the precise form that that orgiastic relief takes must necessarily change with other social changes. ”

“ As a result people become so choked by the monotony of their lives that they are readily amenable to the suggestion of any lurid diversion. Especially in battle, they imagine, will be found the glorious romance of futile dreams. ”

“ But the most common-place drawling monotony is not more mechanical or more offensive, than the converting these exceptions into a general rule, and making every sentence an alternation of dead pauses and rapid transitions. ”

“ They have labored all day in monotony: where shall they go for recreation, and what shall the recreation be? If they go far away they are removed from the sphere of their labors; if they look near to their own abodes, they find not one true and ennobling pastime, but fifty that are degrading, and, at the same time, filled with every possible temptation. ”

“ Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sightseers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ “Anything to vary this detestable monotony. ”

“ The monotony is expressed in a reiteration of subject, barbarous to the intellect of the West; endurance is born of that monotony, and strength, and the acquiescence in things as they are, but not the discovery and development of ideas. ”

“ Again, of all breaks made on the table none is more genuine, none owes less to chance, than a series of spots; and it is far from impossible that its monotony, as it is called, does not in a great measure arise from the absence of luck. ”

“ The combination of colorless monotony with constant racking anxiety slackened the springs of moral energy, which, and which alone, responding joyously to a call to action, afforded the stimulus capable of triumphing over his bodily weakness, and causing it for the moment to disappear. ”

“ My health forbade me from venturing out unless the weather was exceptionally genial, and I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. ”