Monotony Quotes - Page 6

• The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Design, Care

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.921, Wordsworth Editions

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• What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

  George Eliot

  Sweet, Knowledge, Novelty

  "The Mill on the Floss". Easyread Comfort Edition,

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• Those who are skilled in archery bend their bow only when they are preparing to use it; when they do not require it, they allow it to remain unbent, for otherwise it would remain unserviceable when the time for using it arrived. So it is with man. If he were to devote himself unceasingly to a dull round of business, without breaking the monotony by cheerful amusements, he would fall imperceptibly into idiocy, or be struck by paralysis

  Herodotus

  Business, Fall, Men

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• Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not. It does or doesn't disturb optical monotony, and succeeds or fails in surmounting sterility of style or visual stereotype; it creates new beauty or it doesn't.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Style, Doe

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• Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine.

  William Wordsworth

  Sleep, Two, Voice

  William Wordsworth (1954). “The prelude: with a selection from the shorter poems, the sonnets, The recluse, and The excursion, and three essays on the art of poetry”, Harcourt College Pub

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• Nothing comes at all -- never anything. And I cannot accustom myself to that. It is this monotony, this absolute fixity in life, that is the hardest thing for me to endure. I should like to go away from here. Go away? But where and how? I do not know, and I stay.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Life, Going Away, Should

  Octave Mirbeau (1911). “The Experiences of a Ladies' Maid”

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• Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.

  Randall Jarrell

  Voice, Age, Novelists

  Randall Jarrell (2010). “Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy”, p.9, University of Chicago Press

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• how tedious is retirement! You cannot imagine to yourself the monotony with which day comes after day.

  Agatha Christie

  Retirement, Imagine, Tedious

  Agatha Christie (1985). “Agatha Christie: Five Complete Murder Mysteries”, Avenel

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• I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony.

  Winston Churchill

  Children, School, Journey

  Winston Churchill (2010). “My Early Life: 1874-1904”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• monotony is not to be worshipped as a virtue; nor the marriage bed treated as a coffin for security rather than a couch from which to rise refreshed.

  Freya Stark

  Boredom, Bed, Coffins

  Freya Stark (2013). “Perseus In The Wind: A Life of Travel”, p.111, Tauris Parke Paperbacks

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• Monotony and repetition are characteristic of many parts of life, but these do not become sources of conscious discomfort until novelty and entertainment are built up as positive experiences.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Change, Entertainment, Positive Experiences

  Mary Catherine Bateson (1985). “With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson”, Pocket Books

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• Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Spring, Ocean

  Honore de Balzac (2011). “The Magic Skin: Or The Wild Ass's Skin”, p.121, The Floating Press

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• There can be no reproach to pain unless we assume human dignity, there is no reason for restraints on pleasure unless we assume human worth, there is no legitimacy to monotony unless we assume a greater purpose to life, there is no purpose to life unless we assume design, death has no significance unless we seek what is everlasting.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Pain, Design, Purpose

  FaceBook post by Ravi Zacharias from Oct 16, 2016

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• Power always acts destructively, for its possessors are ever striving to lace all phenomena of social life into a corset of their laws to give them a definite shape. Its mental expression is dead dogma; its physical manifestation of life, brute force. This lack of intelligence in its endeavours leaves its imprint likewise on the persons of its representatives, gradually making them mentally inferior and brutal, even though they were originally excellently endowed. Nothing dulls the mind and soul of man as does the eternal monotony of routine, and power is essentially routine.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Men, Expression, Law

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• What attracted me was less art itself than the artist’s life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life.

  Pierre Bonnard

  Art, Passion, Creativity

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• The sound of distant breakers made her heart ache with melancholy. She was in the mood when the sea has a saddening effect upon the nerves. It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay. When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.

  Baroness Orczy

  Heart, Sadness, Gay

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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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• The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all of the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

  Anais Nin

  Dream, Sex, Laughter

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