Ennui Quotes - Page 4

• Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Suffering, Lessons

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.203, Harvard University Press

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• The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Morning, Pursuit Of Happiness

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.95

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• Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie  tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

  Blaise Pascal

  Men, Boredom, Anxiety

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• Philosophy may raise us above grandeur, but nothing can elevate us above the ennui which accompanies it.

  Francoise d'Aubigne, Marquise de Maintenon

  Philosophy, Greatness, May

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• We are amused through the intellect, but it is the heart that saves us from ennui.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Heart, Intellect, Amused

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• If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lasts, Should, Labor

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.177

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• I am fairly tired--bored beyond endurance--by the world we live in, and its ideals, and am ready to say so, not violently, but kindly, as one rubs salt into the back of a flogged sailor as though one loved him.

  Henry Adams

  Tired, Boredom, Endurance

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.276, Harvard University Press

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• The history of the world has been one not of conquest, as supposed; it has been one of ennui.

  Helen Westley

  World, Conquest, Has Beens

  "The Confessions of Helen Westley" by Djuna Barnes in New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, September 23, 1917.

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• And I don't mean this metaphorically. I want to be taken seriously as proposing that the ennui of modernity is the consequence of a disruptive symbiotic relationship between ourselves and vegetable nature.

  Terence McKenna

  Taken, Mean, Vegetables

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• New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.

  Henry Miller

  Jobs, New York, Thug

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement; and if a story is told of more than common interest, ennui is sure to have its joy in adding embellishments. If hours did not hang heavy, what would become of scandal?

  George Bancroft

  Character, Joy, Stories

  George Bancroft (1855). “Literary and historical miscellanies”, p.64

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• Ennui is the desire of activity without the fit means of gratifying the desire.

  George Bancroft

  Mean, Desire, Fit

  George Bancroft (1855). “Literary and historical miscellanies”, p.48

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• Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Good Friend, People, Seems

  Alexander Pushkin, James E. Falen (2009). “Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse”, p.41, Oxford University Press

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• For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

  Henry Miller

  Fear, War, Eye

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

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• Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in "Jurgen" that "to do what you always have done" and "what is expected of you" are the twin rules of life. This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis.

  Abraham Myerson

  Life, Block, Believe

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• Poesy is a beauteous damsel, chaste, honourable, discreet, witty, retired, and who keeps herself within the limits of propriety. She is a friend of solitude; fountains entertain her, meadows console her, woods free her from ennui, flowers delight her; in short, she gives pleasure and instruction to all with whom she communicates.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Witty, Flower, Giving

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• The evil which assails us is not in the localities we inhabit but in ourselves. We lack strength to endure the least task, being incapable of suffering pain, powerless to enjoy pleasure, impatient with everything. How many invoke death when, after having tried every sort of change, they find themselves reverting to the same sensations, unable to discover any new experience.

  Seneca the Younger

  Pain, New Experiences, Evil

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• In the aftermath of 9/11, people had not a good time, but a deep, profound, rousing time, woke up from their ennui and isolation and trivialization to feel engaged, connected, purposeful, ready to give, to engage, to care, to learn.

  Rebecca Solnit

  People, Giving, Profound

  Source: therumpus.net

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