Ennui Quotes

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  It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

  Helen Keller

  Happiness, Time, Women

  Helen Keller (2015). “The Story of My Life: Top Biography”, p.334, 谷月社

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• Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Delirium Tremens, Delirium, Undone

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair.

  Gautama Buddha

  Suicide, Buddhist, Blessing

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• Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Time, Echoes, Tearing Apart

  Emile M. Cioran (1975). “A short history of decay”, Viking Books

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• Life is islands of ecstasy in an ocean of ennui, and after the age of thirty land is seldom seen.

  Luke Rhinehart

  Life, Ocean, Islands

  Luke Rhinehart (1998). “Dice Man”, p.10, The Overlook Press

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• There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sadness, Passion, Men

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• Ennui, the parent of expensive and ruinous vices.

  Ninon de L'Enclos

  Parent, Vices, Expensive

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• The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

  Oscar Wilde

  World, Horrible, Horrible Things

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.341, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• The moment we indulge our affections, the earth is metamorphosed.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Romantic Love, Earth, Affection

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1964). “The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.290, Harvard University Press

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• To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Philosophical, Delight, Hours

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• This ennui, for which we Saxons had no name,--this word of France, has got a terrific significance. It shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Light, Names, Boredom

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.260

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• I am wrapped in dismal thinking.

  William Shakespeare

  Thinking

  Charles Lamb, Mary Lamb, William Harvey, William Shakespeare (1831). “Tales from Shakspeare: designed for the use of young persons”, p.194

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• I am tired of looking on what is,
  One might as well see beauty never more,
  As look upon it with an empty eye.
  I would this world were over. I am tired.

  Philip James Bailey

  Tired, Eye, Looks

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.149

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• The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hands, Feelings, World

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• That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Abuse, Arise

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• The gloomy and the resentful are always found among those who have nothing to do or who do nothing.

  Samuel Johnson

  Found, Gloomy, Resentful

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay”, p.597

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• Between Ennui and Ecstasy unwinds our whole experience of time.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Bored, Unwind, Ecstasy

  Emile M. Cioran (1999). “All Gall is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms”, p.50, Arcade Publishing

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• Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Coping Mechanisms, Giving, Literature

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Ennui shortens life, and bereaves the day of its light.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Light

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.455

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• One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom -such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it -those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Passion, Boredom

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• If the child has not an object that it can occupy itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how to occupy itself with itself.

  Max Stirner

  Children, Doe, Feels

  Max Stirner (1995). “Stirner: The Ego and its Own”, p.17, Cambridge University Press

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• Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Boredom, Made, Drunkards

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• After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Evil, Nostalgia, Exhausted

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• I do not care for anything. I do not care to ride, for the exercise is too violent. I do not care to walk, walking is too strenuous. I do not care to lie down, for I should either have to remain lying, and I do not care to do that, or I should have to get up again, and I do not care to do that either. Summa summarum: I do not care at all.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Lying, Exercise, Should Have

  Soren Kierkegaard (1946). “Either/or”

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• As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Mind, Body, Gout

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.132

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