Humdrum Quotes

• Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Science, People

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.217, Ballantine Books

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• When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Real, Issues, Hands

  On the Falklands campaign, 1982, in Chris Rose 'The Dirty Man of Europe'

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• In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum.

  Joseph de Maistre

  Mean, Men, Perfection

  Joseph De Maistre (2011). “The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty, Religion, and Enlightenment”, Transaction Publishers

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• Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life.

  William Osler

  Routine, May

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.343, Duke University Press

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• Have you ever stopped to think what fun this business of living can be? If you haven't, and if you are one of those who insist upon believing that life is humdrum, grim and boring, then I'm afraid this department is not for you. For I don't believe any such thing. I know that we can all free ourselves and live our lives fully, zestfully and joyfully!

  Dorothy Draper

  Fun, Believe, Thinking

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• Use your imagination and you'll see that even the most narrow, humdrum lives are infinite in scope if you examine them with enough care.

  Mark Haddon

  Imagination, Use, Care

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

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• What am I doing with my life? Am I just going to some humdrum job that I don’t really want to be at, doing some minuscule task, getting paid to be a mindless drone? Or am I out there living life, on my terms, the way I want to live it, doing the things that I want to do?

  Kai Greene

  Jobs, Live Life, Drones

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• I know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum routine of daily life.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Routine, Daily Life, Share

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1892). “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, p.29

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• Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.

  Bernard Cornwell

  Occupation, Easier, Worst

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• it is the sum of small things successfully done that lifts a life out of bondage to the humdrum.

  Dorothea Brande

  Done, Bondage, Lifts

  Dorothea Brande (2013). “Wake Up and Live!: A Formula for Success That Really Works!”, p.40, Penguin

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• People who mattered could not take the humdrum world. But this was not the world, it was enchantment; and all of it was mine.

  Daphne du Maurier

  People, Enchantment, World

  Daphne du Maurier (1969). “My Cousin Rachel”

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• The amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices in moments of crisis; it depends on the efforts made and constantly repeated during the humdrum, uninspiring periods, which separate one crisis from another, and of which normal lives mainly consist.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sacrifice, Effort, Reform

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Life, Art, Truth

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• Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.

  Graham Greene

  Insecurity, Twists, Poison

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• It had been a humdrum couple of days, reaffirming his belief in reincarnation: everything was so boring that this could not be the first time he'd experienced it.

  Colson Whitehead

  Couple, Firsts, Belief

  "Zone One". Book by Colson Whitehead, October 6, 2011.

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• In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Sleep, Thinking

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• What was alien was being ordinary, being humdrum, being trapped into appeasing...having to crush and stifle my opinions, not being allowed to be brilliant, tricking myself into mediocrity.

  Russell Brand

  Crush, Ordinary, Mediocrity

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• That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

  Paul Auster

  Men, Hands, Soul

  Paul Auster (2008). “Collected Novels”

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• For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Humility, Political

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• To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.

  Paul Auster

  Men, Toasters, World

  Paul Auster (2010). “Timbuktu: A Novel”, p.59, Macmillan

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• People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  People, Mad, Religion

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity, understading the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person - vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human nature.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Real, School, Personality

  Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “The Van Alen Legacy: Number 4 in series”, p.165, Hachette UK

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• Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.

  Terry Pratchett

  Dragons, People, Evil

  "Guards! Guards!". Book by Terry Pratchett, 1989.

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• Very few of the heroes of the Golden Age of American finance had much interest in the solid realities of what underlay their structure of stocks and bonds and credits. Later on, a Henry Ford might introduce an era of intensely production-minded captains of industry, but the Harrimans, Morgans, Fricks, and Rockefellers were far more interested in the exciting manipulation of huge masses of intangible wealth than in the humdrum business of turning out goods.

  Robert Heilbroner

  Hero, Reality, Age

  "The Worldly Philosophers". Book by Robert Heilbroner, Chapter VIII, Thorstein Veblen (p. 224), 1953.

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• The flash of rain, the shining rainbow riding completely around the plane, the lift over mountain ridges, the steady, pure air at dawn take-offs. ... It was so alive and rich a life that any other conceivable choice seemed dull, prosaic, and humdrum.

  Dean Smith

  Rain, Air, Shining

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