#boredom

Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all bored, or threatened, or tantalized in differing degrees by a perilous world, some hostile people, and a not very sensitive government. ↗

— Carl Cohen

#boredom #coercion #experiment #government #justice

Faith gives you a concept of the dignity and worth of all work, even simple work, without which work could bore you. ↗

— Timothy Keller

#vocation #work #faith

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring. ↗

— Edward Gorey

#ennui #life #life

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom. ↗

— Voltaire

#life #meaning #misery #life

Lying is not a sin, since there has never been a law-maker or philosopher who could determine what truth is. I lie for the fun of it. I lie for the fear of the gravity of life. I lie out of boredom. How can anyone who has more fantasy than the Catholic evening paper get by without lying? ↗

— Iwan Goll

#truth-boredom #life

The glance embroiders in joy, knits in pain, and sews in boredom. When indifferent, the eye takes stills, when interested, movies. Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face. ↗

— Malcolm De Chazal

#eye #joy #laughter #pain #smile

The Beatles saved the world from boredom. ↗

— George Harrison

#boredom #saved #world

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know, it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else." and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#apathy #boredom #bullshit #europeans #goodness

Charles' conversation was as flat as a street pavement, on which everybody's ideas trudged past, in their workday dress, provoking no emotion, no laughter, no dreams. At Rouen, he said, he had never had any desire to go and see a Paris company at the theatre. He couldn't swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and was unable to explain a riding term she came across in a novel one day. Wheras a man, surely, should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activities, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its grace, initiate you in all mysteries! But this one had nothing to teach; knew nothing, wanted nothing. He thought she was unhappy; and she hated him for that placid immobility, that stolid serenity of his, for that very happiness which she herself brought him. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#contentment #static #dreams

Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom? ↗

— Raoul Vaneigem

#die #dying #entails #guarantee #risk