Humdrum Quotes - Page 2

• Sabbath ceasing means to cease not only from work itself, but also from the need to accomplish and be productive, from the worry and tension that accompany our modern criterion of efficiency, from our efforts to be in control of our lives as if we were God, from our possessiveness and our enculturation, and, finally, from the humdrum and meaninglessness that result when life is pursued without the Lord at the center of it all.

  Marva Dawn

  Mean, Worry, Effort

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• The rich plankton of pop heroes and pop villains on which we Americans are accustomed to feed, the daily media soup of sports figures, ax murderers, politicians, and rock singers, the ever-running river of celebs, heavies, and oddballs that we use to spice up our own relatively humdrum lives has of late become a very watery gruel. Where have all the good guys and bad guys gone? Why does everyone out there look so gray?

  Shana Alexander

  Sports, Running, Hero

  Shana Alexander (1976). “Talking woman”

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• the more humdrum aspects of life do not make for gripping reading. To render them compelling, a writer must describe the universal in eloquent and evocative prose. Alas, Frey's writing suggests that this was not an option, and he came up with something else.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reading, Writing, Gripping

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• Adventure is humdrum and routine unless one assimilates it, unless one relates it to a central core which grows within and gives it contour and significance. Raw experience is empty, just as empty as the forecastle of a whaler as in a chamber of a counting house; for it is not what one does, but in a manifold sense, what one realizes that keeps existence from being vain and trivial.

  Lewis Mumford

  Adventure, Giving, House

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• How surprisingly alive false ideas are! They even have their own evolution. At first they are highfalutin' 'truths,' then humdrum 'laws,' and finally superstitions.

  Nina Berberova

  Law, Ideas, Alive

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• I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum.

  Lauren Willig

  Falling In Love, Angel, Organization

  Lauren Willig (2011). “The Deception of the Emerald Ring”, p.258, Allison & Busby

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• If God does not enter your kitchen, there is something wrong with your kitchen. If you can't take God into your recreation, there is something wrong with your play. We all believe in the God of the heroic. What we need most these days is the God of the humdrum, the commonplace, the everyday.

  Peter Marshall

  Believe, Play, Kitchen

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• I grew up on American pop culture so everything that I fantasized about to get out of this sort of humdrum world of Bradford was about America. So when we decided to move there I was on the plane.

  Aasif Mandvi

  Moving, America, Culture

  "Aasif Mandvi On Life As A 'No Land's Man' And Impressing Jon Stewart". Interview with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 3, 2014.

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• God is wanting you to give Him the despised, the humdrum things in your life - like feet - and let Him make them beautiful.

  Robert Pierce

  Beautiful, Christian, Prayer

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• I have found no better way than to value and savor the sacredness of daily living, to rely on repetition, the humdrum rhythm which heals and steadies.

  Gunilla Brodde Norris

  Way, Found, Repetition

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• I have known female whores who spoke very bitterly of their calling. "If they don't like my face, they can put a cushion over it. I know it's not that they're interested in." But to the boys this profession never seemed shameful. It was their daytime occupations for which they felt the need to apologize. In some instances, these were lower class or humdrum or, worst of all, unfeminine. At least whoring was never that.

  Quentin Crisp

  Boys, Class, Faces

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• Jane Austen writes about these humdrum lives with such empathy that they seem endlessly fascinating

  Mark Haddon

  Writing, Empathy, Austen

  "B is for bestseller" by Mark Haddon, www.theguardian.com. April 11, 2004.

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• Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Running, Creativity, Effort

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• Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.

  David Byrne

  Cheer, Real, Sadness

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• MARVEL IS A CORNUCOPIA OF FANTASY, A WILD IDEA , A SWASHBUCKLING ATTITUDE , AN ESCAPE FROM THE HUMDRUM AND PROSAIC. IT'S A SERENDIPITOUS FEAST FOR THE MIND, THE EYE , AND THE IMAGINATION, A LITERATE CELEBRATION OF UNBRIDLED CREATIVITY, COUPLED WITH A TOUCH OF REBELLION AND AN INSOLENT DESIRE TO SPIT IN THE EYE OF THE DRAGON.

  Stan Lee

  Attitude, Creativity, Eye

  Stan Lee, George Mair (2002). “Excelsior!: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• No one ever mentioned it, but thousands of men welcomed World War II as a way to escape their humdrum lives rather than a chance to fight for God and country.

  Art Buchwald

  Country, War, Fighting

  Art Buchwald (1994). “Leaving home: a memoir”, Thorndike Pr

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• When some incident has shattered the career you’ve mapped out for yourself, a folly, a crime or a misfortune, you mustn’t think you’re down and out. It may be a stroke of luck, and when you look back years later you may say to yourself that you wouldn’t for anything in the world exchange the new life disaster has forced upon you for the dull, humdrum existence you would have led if circumstances hadn’t intervened.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Years, Careers

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• There are too many other inexplicable things around us--horrors, threats, mysteries that draw you in and then inevitably disenchant you. Back to the predictable and humdrum. The prince is never going to come, everybody knows that; and maybe Sleeping Beauty's dead.

  Anne Rice

  Sleep, Mystery, Horror

  Anne Rice (2010). “The Queen of the Damned”, p.4, Ballantine Books

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• What could you do better for your children and your children's children than to record the story of your life, your triumphs over adversity, your recovery after a fall, your progress when all seemed black, your rejoicing when you had finally achieved? Some of what you write may be humdrum dates and places, but there will also be rich passages that will be quoted by your posterity.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Children, Fall, Writing

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• We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Rocks, Circles

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• Bad writing is bad not just because the language is humdrum, but the quality of the observation is so poor.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Writing, Quality, Language

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• I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.

  Suzanne Farrell

  Stage, Curtains, Wanted

  Suzanne Farrell, Toni Bentley (1990). “Holding on to the air: an autobiography”, Summit Press

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• The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself - not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day.

  Michael Behe

  Book, Hard Work, Intelligent

  "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution". Book by Michael Behe, 1996.

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• The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house - this remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one; Socialism may be the world's deliverance, but it is not the world's desire.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Faith, Real, Inspiration

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.280, Simon and Schuster

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• I think I am like most people in letting myself worry about things that didn't matter. Concepts like quotidian and humdrum prevented me for years from really absorbing the miraculous strangeness of bombing around a star on a tottering planet, of watching the world unfold in time.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Stars, Thinking, Years

  "One of Obama’s Favorite Writers Redefines Spirituality". Interview with Gregory Barber, www.motherjones.com. October 25, 2015.

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