Boredom Kills Quotes

Madness is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression…depression is pure dullness, tedium straight up. Depression is, especially these days, an overused term to be sure, but never one associated with anything wild, anything about dancing all night with a lampshade on your head and then going home and killing yourself…The word madness allows its users to celebrate the pain of its sufferers, to forget that underneath all the acting-out and quests for fabulousness and fine poetry, there is a person in huge amounts of dull, ugly agony...Remember that when you’re at the point at which you’re doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt even worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes as its by-product.

Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.

And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom.

Espere" in Spanish, is the one word covering two meanings: "waiting" and "hoping". If life, however, offers no expectation or prospect, waiting represents time "wasted”. Waiting needs a future. If not, time is condemned to be "killed". In the event that we are lost in a gap of boredom and despair, we are driven back in a vacuum of senselessness and deadlocked in a point of nothingness. We are, so therefore, bound to watch the agony of "time". ("Waiting for a place behind the geraniums " )

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.

You've already said you were going to kill me," Alex said, "but I didn't think that meant you were going to bore me to death.

They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.

Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.

Everyone is alone. Everyone is empty. People no longer have need of others. You can always find a spare for any talent. Any relationship can be replaced. I had gotten bored of a world like that. But for some reason... The thought that someone other than you might kill me never occurred to me. (Makishima Shogo)

So, come on! Kill me if you can!!

While my insides may be rotten, I still like a good reason to kill someone. It has to be either business, personal, or out of sheer boredom.

The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.

Kill me now." "Nonsense. Dead, you will provide no relief from the interminable boredom." Everyone needed a purpose in life. Kaylin, however, wished fervently for a better one at this moment.

They found Mr. Jesse in a boat?" I asked. "I'm wondering if maybe he just up and died. Maybe there ain't no murder. Like the fish weren't biting and he died of boredom. It happens. Boredom kills. I've had close brushes myself, during math.

And yet if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is.” —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

Boredom presents a very real, if insidious peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington post:“Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound...Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of a map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly.

Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom means that nothing is trying to kill you every day.

He wonders if words aren't an essential element of sex, if talking isn't finally a more subtle form of touching, and if the images dancing in our heads aren't just as important as the bodies we hold in our arms. Margot tells him that sex is the one thing in life that counts for her, that if she couldn't have sex she would probably kill herself to escape the boredom and monotony of being trapped inside her own skin. Walker doesn't say anything, but as he comes into her for the second time, he realizes that he shares her opinion. He is mad for sex. Even in the grip of the most crushing despair, he is mad for sex. Sex is the lord and the redeemer, the only salvation on earth.

I’d say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it once was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land; my grandfather, the magician of beautiful tables; the shoemakers who knew every villager’s feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners; probably even the soldiers killed with passion back then. The meaning of life wasn’t an issue, it was there with them, quite naturally in their workshops, in their fields. Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think differently from a peasant, a soldier would behave differently from a teacher. Today we’re all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

Why do you think there are no gods on Mount Olympus now? They killed themselves, that’s why. They were terminally bored.

Once I realized I was old enough to die, I decided that I was also old enough not to incur any more suffering, annoyance, or boredom in the pursuit of a longer life.

There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most obvious ones were not the most powerful. Rarely is suicide committed (yet the hypothesis is not excluded) through reflection. What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of "personal sorrows" or of "incurable illness." These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitate all the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension. But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let's not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to everyday words. It is merely confessing that that "is not worth the trouble." Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of Beauty, man would pine away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as Christ, the ideal of Beauty in Himself and his Word, he decided it was better to implant the ideal of Beauty in the soul. If it exists in the soul, each would be the brother of everyone else and then, of course, working for each other, all would also be rich. Whereas if you give them bread, they might become enemies to each other out of boredom.

He was prepared to die for it, as one of Baudelaire's dandies might have been prepared to kill himself in order to preserve himself in the condition of a work of art, for he wanted to make this experience a masterpiece of experience which absolutely transcended the everyday. And this would annihilate the effects of the cruel drug, boredom, to which he was addicted although, perhaps, the element of boredom which is implicit in an affair so isolated from the real world was its principle appeal for him.

Boredom is actually going to kill me. I

I wouldn't need to be so very different for sun to seem to be about sun, for green to be about green, for joy and boredom and anguish and terror and death to all be themselves, beyond the need for any killing clarity, and then this--this, the growing rings of light and water and stone--would take up all of me, and be all the words I need.

Isn’t everyone on the planet or at least everyone on the planet called me stuck between the two impulses of wanting to walk away like it never happened and wanting to be a good person in love, loving, being loved, making sense, just fine? I want to be that person, part of a respectable people, but I also want nothing to do with being people, because to be people is to be breakable, to know that your breaking is coming, any day now and maybe not even any day but this day, this moment, right now a plane could fall out of the sky and crush you or the building you’re in could just crumble and kill you or kill the someone you love— and to love someone is to know that one day you’ll have to watch them break unless you do first and to love someone means you will certainly lose that love to something slow like boredom or festering hate or something fast like a car wreck or a freak accident or flesh-eating bacteria— and who knows where it came from, that flesh-eating bacteria, he was such a nice-looking fellow, it is such a shame— and your wildebeest, everyone’s wildebeest, just wants to get it over with, can’t bear the tension of walking around the world as if we’re always going to be walking around the world, because we’re not, because here comes a cancer, an illness a voice in your head that wants to jump out a window, a person with a gun, a freak accident, a wild wad of flesh-eating bacteria that will start with your face.

Hard work, says the Scottish proverb, never killed a man. People die of boredom and disease. There is nothing like an occasional all-night push to enliven morale – provided you are part of the push. Never leave the bridge in a storm.

Time is quixotic because it can torment us. When we have insufficient stimulus to fill our lives, we resent the relentless quality of time, and we engage in activities designed to “kill time.” Time that passes slowly creates insufferable boredom; time that passes to quickly makes us aware of our accelerated death march. A person’s perspective on time depends mostly on what they are most afraid of, boredom or death.

I didn’t tell them your secret.” My fingers dug into the wood of the window frame, the splinters cutting through my skin like little blades. The police officers were raiding the second floor, I could tell. I could hear them. They were going to find the attic, and then me. “Tell me you believe me, and I’ll jump.” “What difference does it make?” He bared his fangs, staring at me with forced boredom. The fire spread, licking at the grass and approaching us with surprising speed, though he didn’t seem to mind at all. We were already dangerously close to getting caught. “Because it’s the truth,” I screamed. Our eyes met in the dark and held for a moment. “I don’t believe you, but I’ll still catch you,” he said. “I will always catch you, the fucking dumbass that I am.” “What do you mean?” “You soften me.” “Why?” “Because I don’t want to fucking kill you! You’re too fun to fuck with. Now Get. The. Hell. Down.

I used to think that no one could beat Soviet men for endless speeches, but when I came to America, I realized men of all nationalities like the sound of their own voices, especially the kind of man who spends long hours behind a podium. Whether in a Washington park or a Sevastopol battle zone, it’s all the same: after the first speech you’re afraid the boredom will kill you; after the fifth speech, you’re praying it will.

There are always risks in life, my little ones. If you don’t take risks, you simply endure, and if you endure, you die—even if it’s only boredom that kills you.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

Dear Logan, You know how my dad said he was going to leave the Secret Service because it was dangerous and he didn't want to risk getting killed and leaving me alone in the world and all that? Well, he brought me to a place where he leaves me alone all the time and where pretty much even the AIR can kill you. Seriously. Things that can kill you in Alaska: - animals - water - snow - ice - falling trees - more animals - bacteria - the common cold - hunger - cliffs - rocks - poorly treated burns, cuts and scrapes - boredom I may definitely die of boredom. Maddie

I was too apathetic to be bored or anxious. Boredom and anxiety were the neurotic cousins of concern; they implied wishes. I had no wishes or wants. I didn't even want dope. I only needed it.

Boy everyone in this country is running around yammering about their fucking rights. "I have a right, you have no right, we have a right." Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but... there's no such thing as rights. They're imaginary. We made 'em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Rights are an idea. They're just imaginary. They're a cute idea. Cute. But that's all. Cute...and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, "where do they come from?" People say, "They come from God. They're God given rights." Awww fuck, here we go again...here we go again. The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, "It came from God." Anything we can't describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would've given you the right for some food every day, and he would've given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would've been looking out for ya. You know that. He wouldn't have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend's parents. But let's say it's true. Let's say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights? The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK...10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we've had to ammend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like...SLAVERY. Just fuckin' slipped his mind. But let's say...let's say God gave us the original 10. He gave the british 13. The british Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Sweedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fuckin' god damn god given deal is that!?...NO RIGHTS AT ALL!? Why would God give different people in different countries a different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Amusement? Bad arithmetic? Do we find out at long last after all this time that God is weak in math skills? Doesn't sound like divine planning to me. Sounds more like human planning . Sounds more like one group trying to control another group. In other words...business as usual in America. Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, "Japanese-Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it. In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter. Yeup, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn't give a fuck about them. the government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. it simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in it's own power. That's the only thing...keeping it, and expanding wherever possible. Personally when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all.

The only teenagers in town seemed to kill themselves in gruesomely rural ways—I heard about their pickups crashing at two in the morning, the sleepover in the garage camper ending in carbon monoxide poisoning, a dead quarterback. I didn’t know if this was a problem born of country living, the excess of time and boredom and recreational vehicles, or whether it was a California thing, a grain in the light urging risk and stupid cinematic stunts

The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost.

If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have been shut off, isolated, without love. This miracle of sudden intimacy is often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being “crazy” about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness. […] There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.

Ian was crafty, powerful, and practically fearless in a fight. Too bad all that came wrapped up with the conscience of a barracuda, but he was loyal in his own way to Bones and Spade. Ian might claim he was here only because of boredom or the chance to see Denise shape shift into something unusual, but I knew better. The Inquisitor had fucked up when he tried to kill Bones. That, Ian cared about.

- What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and what is it? Float on flowery beds of ease? Think Man was just made to be happy? - Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for! - Well, we know not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a... well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself? - Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', to escape boredom.

Yes, interest! The worm of interest. Are you surprised? No? Yes? One conclusion I have reached here after a year in my cell is that the only emotion people feel nowadays is interest or the lack of it. Curiosity and interest and boredom have replaced the so-called emotions we used to read about in novels or see registered on actors' faces. Even the horrors of the age translate into interest. Did you ever watch anybody pick up a newspaper and read the headline PLANE CRASH KILLS THREE HUNDRED? How horrible! says the reader. But look at him when he hands you the paper. Is he horrified? No, he is interested. When is the last time you saw anybody horrified?

Boredom is easy. Which is why sadness hides there so readily. But don’t be fooled for long. Dying of boredom. There’s reason behind that idiom. It’ll kill you sure enough.

Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.

It's all right to show boredom. Just never show fear. They'll smell it on you, like sharks, and come in for the kill.

so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom

I’M READY TO PEEL THE skin off my own face to kill the boredom of being in this dud’s presence. If I wasn’t so damn handsome I might settle for just banging my head on the table. What

Somebody said combat is 99 percent sheer boredom and 1 percent pure terror. They weren’t an MP in Iraq. On the roads I was scared all the time. Maybe not pure terror. That’s for when the IED actually goes off. But a kind of low-grade terror that mixes with the boredom. So it’s 50 percent boredom and 49 percent normal terror, which is a general feeling that you might die at any second and that everybody in this country wants to kill you. Then, of course, there’s the 1 percent pure terror, when your heart rate skyrockets and your vision closes in and your hands are white and your body is humming. You can’t think. You’re just an animal, doing what you’ve been trained to do. And then you go back to normal terror, and you go back to being a human, and you go back to thinking.

Declaring war on Skaal increased patriotism among the people, made them forget about all their other problems, killed off some of the excess population, often resulted in the acquisition of some valuable booty, and — most importantly — relieved Boric’s crushing boredom. It was too bad about the killing, of course, but most of the peasants were probably going to die of plague or starvation anyway.

Spleen Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux, Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes, S'ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d'autres bêtes. Rien ne peut l'égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. Du bouffon favori la grotesque ballade Ne distrait plus le front de ce cruel malade; Son lit fleurdelisé se transforme en tombeau, Et les dames d'atour, pour qui tout prince est beau, Ne savent plus trouver d'impudique toilette Pour tirer un souris de ce jeune squelette. Le savant qui lui fait de l'or n'a jamais pu De son être extirper l'élément corrompu, Et dans ces bains de sang qui des Romains nous viennent, Et dont sur leurs vieux jours les puissants se souviennent, II n'a su réchauffer ce cadavre hébété Où coule au lieu de sang l'eau verte du Léthé // I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, one who escapes his tutor's monologues, and kills the day in boredom with his dogs; nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, his people dying by the balcony; the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite no longer gets him through a single night; his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb; even the ladies of the court, for whom all kings are beautiful, cannot put on shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent washes to cleanse the poisoned element; even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, our tyrants' solace in senility, he cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood. — Robert Lowell, from Marthiel & Jackson Matthews, eds., The Flowers of Evil (NY: New Directions, 1963)

Suicide" Kissshot said disappointedly . Her eyes were downcast , facing the town spread out below her . "A common reason , one accounting for nine-tenths of vampire deaths". ".....". "Incidentally , the remaining tenth succumb to vampire slayers - any other reason fit within the margins of a rounding error". "Suicide ? Why ?". "Do they not speak of dying of boredom ?". Boredom was a killer . Guilt could kill you - but boredom was lethal .

He said he had not seen much other than change for four years, and he guessed the promise of it was part of what made up the war frenzy in the early days. The powerful draw of new faces, new places, new lives. And new laws whereunder you might kill all you wanted and not be jailed, but rather be decorated. Men talked of war as if they committed it to preserve what they had and what they believed. But Inman now guessed it was boredom with the repetition of the daily rounds that had made them take up weapons. The endless arc of the sun, wheel of seasons. War took a man out of that circle of regular life a made a season of its own, not much dependent on anything else.

Factory farm animals cannot walk, run, stretch freely, or be part of a family or herd. True, many wild animals die from adverse conditions or are killed by predators; but animals kept in farms do not live for more than a fraction of their normal life span either. [The factory farm] deprives animals of their most basic natural activity, the search for food. The result is a life of utter boredom, with nothing at all to do but lie in a stall and eat.

Romantic idea of love: he has found the right person; he has opened his heart to her; and he has been accepted. But he is, of course, nowhere yet. He and Kirsten will marry, they will suffer, they will frequently worry about money, they will have a girl first, then a boy, one of them will have an affair, there will be passages of boredom, they’ll sometimes want to murder one another and on a few occasions to kill themselves. This will be the real love story.

That is the story of life after all, isn't it? Killing time until time kills you. Pretty desolate if one thinks about it. Well, let's collect memories, lots and lots of them, all before we might realise that our lives were just a shimmer!

The king of Argos made a noise of disgust. “I’m sick to death of this tale about your marriage bed.” “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have suggested I tell it.” “And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom.

Most of the time, most days, I feel nothing. I don’t feel anything. It is so boring. I wake up, and I think, again, really? I have to do this again? And what I really don’t understand is how come everyone else isn’t screaming with boredom, too.

You don't know this yet but most people you thank for their service joke about killing babies and fucking their mothers. They have wet dreams about pink mist, about shake 'n' bakes, about enfilade fire. They're chronic masturbators, philanderers, and alcoholics. They wish for five hundred-pounders to drop on mosques just so the call to prayer will stop, they take bumps of coke before they get behind the gun, and smoke weed in the corners of FOB's to even out. They shoot dogs out of boredom.

...problems around sleeping, fatigue, boredom, killing time, storage, health, sex, along with harassment and dozens of unpredictable difficulties encountered on the street -- were some of the 'little murders of everyday life' that confronted homeless women.

He grabs hold of my wrist. I am shocked by the sensation of his skin warm against mine. 'Take care,' he says, and then smiles. 'It would be very dull to have to sit here for an entire day just because you went and got yourself killed.' 'My last thought would be of your boredom.

Hard work never killed anybody!" Sometimes when Aunt Hester droned on about it I used to think to myself, Maybe not, but hearing about it is killing me! Of course I daren't say it, and of course nobody ever did die of boredom or great-aunt Hester would have been knee-deep in corpses.

She asked me what wedding present I would make to my bride. A wedding bed, I said, rather gallantly, of finest holm-oak. But this answer did not please her. ‘A wedding bed should not be made of dead, dry wood, but something green and living,’ she told me. ‘And what if I can make such a bed?’ I said. ‘Will you have me?’ And she said—” The king of Argos made a noise of disgust. “I’m sick to death of this tale about your marriage bed.” “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have suggested I tell it.” “And perhaps you should get some new stories, so I don’t fucking kill myself of boredom.

Monkeys" "You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets-- a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle feels the want of her affection so keenly he either pines away or masters you by literally hanging on your neck-- no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced; the worst is his air of boredom and neglect, manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking. The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds, likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket, a floortray thinly covered with sawdust, they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires-- any string or beam will do to set them swinging-- these charming youngsters tend to sour with age

Forget the experimental drugs killing her, boredom would get her first. Breakfast eaten – lukewarm mush again, yay – teeth brushed – with the hem of her gown because the guards feared them making a shank out of toothbrushes, whatever that meant – she’d even finished her daily walk – a dozen turns around her tiny cell.

David Abrams’s Fobbit, Giorgio Agamben’s The Open, Omnia Amin and Rick London’s translations of Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi’s poetry, Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well, Donovan Campbell’s Joker One, C. J. Chivers’s The Gun, Seth Connor’s Boredom by Day, Death by Night, Daniel Danelo’s Blood Stripes, Kimberly Dozier’s Breathing the Fire, Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Siobhan Fallon’s You Know When the Men Are Gone, Nathaniel Fick’s One Bullet Away, Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, Jim Frederick’s Black Hearts, Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom, Jessica Goodell’s Shade It Black, J. Glenn Gray’s The Warriors, Dave Grossman’s On Killing and On Combat, Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, Kirsten Holmstedt’s Band of Sisters, Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn, Colum McCann’s Dancer, Patrick McGrath’s Trauma, Jonathan Shay’s Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam, Roy Scranton’s essays and fiction, the Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction Report Hard Lessons, Bing West’s The Strongest Tribe and No True Glory, Kayla Williams’s Love My Rifle More Than You.

The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species' sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion, and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment.

One small study of undergraduates found that 66 percent of men and 25 percent of women choose to painfully shock themselves rather than sit quietly with nothing to do for 15 minutes. Boredom doesn’t just lead us to hurt ourselves; 18 percent of bored people killed worms when given a chance (only 2 percent of non-bored people did). Bored parents and soldiers both act more sadistically. Boredom is not just boring; it is dangerous in its own way.

No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom. No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails. Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals. Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven.

Imagine this race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is. Thus for a race such as this no stage, no form of existence is suitable other than the one it already possesses.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle. There is not a whisper of wind. The hours last forever. You are so bored you sink into a state of apathy close to a coma. Then the sea becomes rough and your emotions are whipped into a frenzy. Yet even these two opposites do not remain distinct. In your boredom there are elements of terror: you break down into tears; you are filled with dread; you scream; you deliberately hurt yourself And in the grip of terror - the worst storm - you yet feel boredom, a deep weariness with it all. Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious. Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing. You must make adjustments if you want to survive. Much becomes expendable. You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish.

The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”— every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror. Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to himself; science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the original sin. This is all there is of morality.—“Thou shall not know”:—the rest follows from that.—God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of man don’t allow him to think.... Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods—what is to be done?—The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (—the priests have always had need of war....). War—among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of war.—So the old God comes to his final resolution: “Man has become scientific—there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”...

You are the third bride wed for peace," Cymbra said with a smile. "And to be frank, it has not been an easy road for the two of us who went before. Yet knowing what we do now, neither Krysta nor I would ever have chosen a different path." "How much choice did you have?" To Rycca's surprise, Cymbra laughed. "In my case, none." She sighed in mocking languor. "I still remember Wolf's deeply romantic proposal. He told me that if I did not wed him, he would kill my brother." "He what?" "Oh,don't worry, he's gotten much better." She laughed again, fondly. "Much, much better.Besides, Dragon is the one who was always good with women." Rycca could not dispute that but neither could she ignore what she had just been told.Shocked, she asked, "What did you do?" "Do? Why,I punched him,of course. What else could I do? He went to our wedding worried that the blow still showed." "You...punched him?" The ethereal beauty beside her had struck the fierce Wolf? "Rycca,dear sister, something you must learn at once.Wolf and Dragon are both wonderful men but they are also overwhelming. It is part of their charm. Nontheless,with them it is always best to be firm. For that matter, the same can be said of my brother, as Krysta learned readily enough." "She and Lord Hawk seem devoted to each other." "As are Wold and I. That doesn't mean one should be a meek little woman rubbing feet." "What a horrible notion! However did you think of it?" "Oh,didn't you know? That's the kind of wife Dragon always said he wanted." Too many more shocks of this sort and she was going to turn to stone right where she stood. "He said that? Whatever could he have been thinking? Any such woman would drive him mad." "Which is more or less what Wolf told him, only he said she would kill him with boredom. No, Dragon needs someone who can match his spirit, which I am now reassured you can do. Come, let us seek out Magda, who will serve us cool milk and cakes and give us a snug place to talk while the men amuse themselves." "Dragon has a sword for his brother." "The Moorish sword? Perfect, they will be occupied for hours.We won't see them again until they are satisfied neither is stronger or more agile than the other.

But Winifred had insisted on these outfits. She said I'd need to dress the part, no matter what my deficiencies, which should never be admitted by me. "Say you have a headache," she told me. "It's always an acceptable excuse." She told me many other things as well. "It's all right to show boredom," she said. "Just never show fear. They'll smell it on you, like sharks, and come in for the kill. You can look at the edge of the table - it lowers your eyelids - but never look at the floor, it makes your neck look weak. Don't stand up straight, you're not a soldier. Never cringe. If someone makes a remark that's insulting to you, say Excuse me? as if you haven't heard; nine times out of ten they won't have the face to repeat it. Never raise your voice to a waiter, its vulgar. Make them bend down, it's what they're for. Don't fidget with your gloves or your hair. Always look as if you have something better to do, but never show impatience. When in doubt, go to the powder room, but go slowly. Grace comes from indifference." Such were her sermons. I have to admit, despite my loathing of her, that they have proved to be of considerable value in my life.

Now it is at once well worth noting that, on the one hand, the sufferings and afflictions of life can easily grow to such an extent that even death, in the flight from which the whole of life consists, becomes desirable, and a man voluntarily hastens to it. Again, on the other hand, it is worth noting that, as soon as want and suffering give man a relaxation, boredom is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion and amusement. The striving after existence is what occupies all living things, and keeps them in motion. When existence is assured to them, they do not know what to do with it. Therefore the second thing that sets them in motion is the effort to get rid of the burden of existence, to make it no longer felt, “to kill time,” in other words, to escape from boredom. Accordingly we see that almost all men, secure from want and cares, are now a burden to themselves, after having finally cast off all other burdens. They regard as a gain every hour that is got through, and hence every deduction from that very life, whose maintenance as long as possible has till then been the object of all their efforts. Boredom is anything but an evil to be thought of lightly; ultimately it depicts on the countenance real despair. It causes beings who love one another as little as men do, to seek one another so much, and thus becomes the source of sociability. From political prudence public measures are taken against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities, since this evil, like its opposite extreme, famine, can drive people to the greatest excesses and anarchy; the people need panem et circenses.

The Search for Happiness Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of [children]. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate. —PSALM 127:5     Storm Jameson, a twentieth-century English writer, wrote, “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” Parents want to make their children happy, employers want to make employees happy, married couples want a happy marriage, etc. “Just make me happy, and I’ll be satisfied!” Isn’t that what people (ourselves included) think and expect of others a lot of the time? Yet, we run into so many unhappy people—clearly these expectations are rarely met. Our newspapers are full of stories about unhappy people. They rob, they kill, they steal, they take drugs. They, they, they. Everywhere one looks, there is unhappiness. Then how does one become happy? I’ve found that happiness comes from one’s own perception. No one else is responsible for your happiness. Look in the mirror, and you can see who is responsible for your happiness! Gerald Brenan wrote: One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then if we do that, we will never suffer a moment’s boredom.56 Happiness comes from within. It’s what you do: the choices you make, the interests you pursue, the attitudes you have, the friends you make, the faith you embrace, and the peace you live. You, you, you bring happiness to your life—no one else. Turn to the One who created you, inside and out, and follow His lead to happiness and wholeness.

I have only twenty acres," replied the Turk; "I cultivate them with my children; work keeps away the three great evils: boredom, vice, and need." As Candide went back to his farm, he reflected deeply on the Turk's remarks. He said to Pangloss and Martin: "That good old man seems to me to have made himself a life far preferable to that of the six Kings with whom we had the honor of having supper." "Great eminence," said Pangloss, " is very dangerous, according to the report of all philosophers. For after all, Eglon, King of the Moabites, was assassinated by Ehud; Absolom was hanged by his hair and pierced with three darts; King Naab son of Jeroboam was killed by Baasha..." "I also know", said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden." "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was put in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, to work; which proves that man was not born to rest." "Let us work without reasoning," said Martin, "it is the only way to make life endurable." All the little society entered into this laudable plan; each one began to exercise his talents. The little piece of land produced much. True, Cunégonde was very ugly; but she became and excellent pastry cook; Paquette embroidered; the old woman took care of the linen. No one, not even Friar Giroflée, failed to perform some service; he was a very good carpenter, and even became an honorable man; and Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds. for after all, if you had not been expelled from a fine castle with great kicks in the backside for love of Mademoiselle Cunégonde, if you had not been subjected to the Inquisition, if you had not traveled about America on foot, if you had not given the Baron a great blow with your sword, if you had not lost all your sheep from the good country of Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied citrons and pistachios." "That is well said," replied Candide, "but we must cultivate our garden.

It turns out that bliss—a second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (tax returns, televised golf), and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert.

Imagine a race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is.

He leaned against the chair, his muscular arms relaxed. “Is yer name Rose Amy.” I gave him an impressed look. I hadn’t expected him to catch on to the vague alphabetical clues to my initials. “Wrong.” “Curses.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth a few times, and I wanted to lean in and kiss him, hard. “Renee… Antoinette”. “I’d kill my mother if she named me Rene Antoinette.” I took another drink of my beer, wishing I hadn’t mentioned my mother. He gave a throaty laugh. “It’s god-awful, that’s fur sure.” “Quit stalling,” I sighed in mock boredom. “Rachel Anne.” My blood slopped to a halt in my veins. “Uh-No.” I lied, hiding the shock in my eyes.

Every triumph is preceded by fear. Fear always initiates the act of breaking free. And why? What is the biological advantage of a trapped psyche? Breaking out, walking freely through the forest, leaving old trails for new ones always entails a certain quantum of risk. Might we not come face to face with the lurking enemy? Might we fail to measure up? Might we not be injured or killed? But both the forest and the enemy are within. Life entails risk. If it were otherwise, one could not bear to live it, for the risks of boredom, of being trapped within the self—the chick dying in the egg—of dying without having lived, are risks far greater than any that lurk in the forest.

The state of boredom must be avoided, because it kills more than war.

He has, without knowing how, richly succeeded at the three central challenges underpinning the Romantic idea of love: he has found the right person, he has opened his heart to her and he has been accepted. And yet he is, of course, nowhere yet. He and Kirsten will marry, they will suffer, they will frequently worry about money, they will have a girl first, then a boy, one of them will have an affair, there will be passages of boredom, they’ll sometimes want to murder one another and on a few occasions to kill themselves. This will be the real love story.

The only thing I like is shark attacks. Now, I don’t say that with a cold heart. In fact, I feel really bad for anyone unlucky enough to get killed or injured in a shark attack. And more generally, I’m fairly certain I possess basically normal levels of empathy and compassion for my fellow humans. However, I just can’t help but love reading and/or listening to news stories about shark attacks. Call it a morbid obsession if you will. Will you? In fact, I daresay I don’t give a fiddler’s curse about anything in the universe other than shark attacks. And if sharks suddenly were to cease attacking humans so that I could no longer hear about shark attacks in the news, I’d likely blow my fucking brains out for sheer boredom! Anyhow, all that is to say that I am the founder of the International Shark Attack Conservation Society (ISACS). I must admit that membership in the ISACS is rather low at the moment. Okay, membership has always been low. Okay, the society has only ever had one member: moi. As it turns out, while many folks are all about conserving sharks and other wildlife, not everybody is so keen on conserving shark attacks. But, hey, I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum.

ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

[Death by Starvation or Boredom] Many are those who work For cheap wages Only to barely survive One breath at a time… Just one more breath… And others who have so much Yet work simply to kill boredom Only to feel that they are saving A world that is drowning Because of their greed And their love for power and wealth… The first one remains one step or less Closer to dying of starvation; While the second one -who provides the wages of the first one- Remain one step or less closer to dying of boredom… And here lies the irony! It’s as if fate insists on breaking All human barriers To force everyone to choose Between death by starvation or boredom… And owe to those who die of both… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on January 28, 2023]

Farah looked freaked out until Tawny hugged her and the tension faded from her face. A minute later, the table cloth lifted and Bailey appeared with beer bottles in her hands. “I figured you’d need booze to deal with the boredom of hiding.” “I can’t drink,” Farah said. “I’m off the pill and trying to get knocked up.” “I am knocked up. I also don’t like that brand of beer.” Handing the beers to Tawny, Bailey nodded. “Be back in a sec.” A minute later, Bailey returned with two cans of Coke for Farah and me. “So what are we talking about?” Bailey asked. “Men needing to protect their women,” I explained. “Lame. Talk about something I can join in on. What’s your sister like? Is she hotter than me?” “Yes.” “I hate her and you should tell her to watch out. If I see her, that pretty face is dead meat.” Grinning, I cuddled up with her as the table shook from fighting bodies knocking against it. “You’re having a baby?” she asked, wrapping her arms around me. “Everyone is getting married or having babies.” “Raven isn’t,” I said as Farah peeked out from under the table cloth to check on Cooper. She smiled and returned to her spot. “Judd and Aaron have stripped Mac down and are shoving him out the door.” Tawny laughed. “Judd finally got to punish Mac for letting me touch his arm months ago. Good for him.” Laughing, I leaned my head against Bailey. “Raven has bad taste in men. Going out with her will be great for you. If Raven likes someone, you’ll know he’s a loser. So she’ll distract all the shitty guys from you.” “Huh. And she’s hot, so she’ll draw guys to us. I think she might be my new best friend,” Bailey said, taking a swig. ‘Don’t be jealous. I just need a man because all of the kissing and fucking and marrying and baby making you guys keep doing. I can’t be the only one alone and Vaughn doesn’t count because he’ll be dead in a few months and shouldn’t be dating anyway.” We all frowned at Bailey who shrugged. “Those Devils fuck are going to kill him or he’ll try to kill them and get killed. Why do you think they call him Dead Man Walking?” “You’re bumming me out,” I told her while finishing my soda. “I wish Aaron was here.” “As you wish,” Aaron said, leaning down. “Look at you pretty girls hiding under here.” “We’re not hiding,” I said, crawling out. “We’re planning our attack. You know, just in case you couldn’t handle things.” When Aaron grinned, I noticed blood on his lip. “You’re hurt.” “You should see the other guys.” Glancing around, I noticed Mac’s friend was propped up on the pool table and the other guys were throwing pretzels and peanuts at him. In the corner, Kirk and Jodi sat as if on their porch drinking lemonade and admiring the sunset. “My hero,” I said, caressing the cobra. “Are you talking to me or the tattoo?” “Both, baby. Always both.

His hostility has become second nature, a way of life, of survival, even. Yes, survival, because Ferdinand resents growing old. Solitude, the decay of the body, all that is slowly killing him. The only activity Ferdinand has found to stave off boredom is being nasty so no one misses him when he goes.

Boredom and routine can kill dopamine. Some suggestions are a date, a fun ride, a rollercoaster, or just a fun sport. Exercise helps anyway, since it also boosts endorphins.

This life-enhancing, happiness-inducing miracle drug that does, in fact, ruthlessly kill its enemies—you’ve guessed it—is gratitude.

It is a property of works of genius that, even when they represent vividly the nothingness of things, even when they clearly show and make you feel the inevitable unhappiness of life, even when they express the most terrible despair, nevertheless to a great soul that finds itself in a state of extreme dejection, disenchantment, nothingness, boredom, and discouragement about life, or in the most bitter and deathly misfortune (whether on account of lofty, powerful passions or something else), such works always bring consolation, [260] and rekindle enthusiasm, and, though they treat and represent nothing but death, they restore, albeit momentarily, the life that it had lost. And so, while that which is seen in the reality of things grieves and kills the soul, when seen in imitation or any other form in works of genius (e.g., in lyric poetry, which is not, properly speaking, imitation), it opens and revives the heart. In fact, just as the author who described and felt so powerfully the vanity of illusions, but still preserved a great fund of them and gave ample proof of this by conveying their vanity so accurately (see pp. 214–15), in the same way, the reader, however disillusioned both about himself and about what he reads, is yet drawn by the author into the same deception and illusion that he experienced and that are hidden in the most intimate recesses of his spirit. And the recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius." from "Zibaldone

Where Eckhart Tolle meets Jack Kerouac meets Buddha. A free consciousness expanding book to kill Ego, sexual boredom & lack of excitement in life.

Are you serious, Lee? You have your choice between standing around among the Empress’s court, being polite to arrogant parasites while you’re slowly being driven insane with boredom, or exploring an area of the world that few Northerners have ever seen. Which sounds better to you?” “I’m not sure. Remind me which one doesn’t involve being on a boat.” He frowned. “What’s wrong with being on a boat?” “Besides the tendency to capsize and kill everyone on board? Nothing, I’m sure.” Plus there was something about the thought of all that open air and water that made me want to shiver. “You’re afraid of boats?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he pressed his lips together, as though wishing he could snatch back the question by the act of shutting his mouth. But that was what it came down to, an irrational fear based on no experience with an activity others had no difficulty with. “Apparently so.” “You never told me that.” He appeared to be accusing me of something. “I didn’t know until just now, did I?” “Don’t worry about it, Lee. It’ll be fine.” I gritted my teeth. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be a treat until the boat sinks.” “Actually, I think they prefer to have it called a ship.” “Don’t even start with me.

There is no boredom other than the thought of boredom.

One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course. Work, worry, toil and trouble are indeed the lot of almost all men their whole life long. And yet if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to a Utopia where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place some men would die of boredom or hang themselves, some would fight and kill one another, and thus they would create for themselves more suffering than nature inflicts on them as it is. Thus for a race such as this no stage, no form of existence is suitable other than the one it already possesses.

He was the very model of what the preacher in Hyde Park was pleased to call A Virtuous Life and the boredom of it would probably kill him.

When the cyclical movement from boredom to excitement and from excitement to boredom ceases, the mental chatter will stop, thoughts will fall in a natural rhythm, and peace already there as the substratum will shine.

She is so much smaller than her siblings, Set. Weaker. Let us kill her now and search for another,” the lion-headed goddess whispered, her sharp, ivory teeth sparkling as she yawned with boredom, letting out a soft roar as she licked at her companion’s ear. I must be dreaming, Aiyah thought.

As the two persons become better acquainted and more familiar to each other, their intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning they do not know all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being ‘crazy’ about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.