Tedium Quotes - Page 2

• Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking above all else, something like a state of grace.

  Jon Krakauer

  Pain, Climbing, Order

  FaceBook post by Jon Krakauer from Aug 27, 2011

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• She wasn't a victim of fate, she was running her own risks, pushing beyond her own limits, experiencing things which, one day, in the silence of her heart, in the tedium of old age, she would remember almost with nostalgia - however absurd that might seem.

  Paulo Coelho

  Running, Heart, Fate

  5 Copy quote

• I felt the sort of soaring, ceilingless tedium that transcends tedium and becomes worry.

  David Foster Wallace

  Worry, Soar, Felt

  4 Copy quote

• I hear that in many places something has happened to Christmas; that it is changing from a time of merriment and carefree gaiety to a holiday which is filled with tedium; that many people dread the day and the obligation to give Christmas presents is a nightmare to weary, bored souls; that the children of enlightened parents no longer believe in Santa Claus; that all in all, the effort to be happy and have pleasure makes many honest hearts grow dark with despair instead of beaming with good will and cheerfulness.

  Julia Peterkin

  Christmas, Xmas, Children

  "A Plantation Christmas". Book by Julia Peterkin, 1934.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reason why I hate working in theatre is the tedium of memorisation. But once that is done, then you feast on this never-ending meal. If you play it correctly, every night is fraught with very high stakes that are very difficult to find in everyday life.

  Christopher Meloni

  Hate, Night, Play

  7 Copy quote

• Tedium is the bane of immortality.

  Neil Lowe

  Crazy, Mad, Immortality

  5 Copy quote

• I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure. The tedium was relieved by a few courses that seem to be qualitatively different. Geometry was the first exciting course I remember. Instead of memorizing facts, we were asked to think in clear, logical steps. Beginning from a few intuitive postulates, far reaching consequences could be derived, and I took immediately to the sport of proving theorems.

  Steven Chu

  Sports, Adventure, Science

  4 Copy quote

• I have often started off on a walk in the state called mad-mad in the sense of sore-headed, or mad with tedium or confusion; I have set forth dull, null and even thoroughly discouraged. But I never came back in such a frame of mind, and I never met a human being whose humor was not the better for a walk.

  Donald C. Peattie

  Mad, Confusion, Mind

  6 Copy quote

• If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Lying, Healing, Fighting

  Sinclair Lewis (1956). “Dodsworth”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore - on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Jesus, People, Justice

  67 Copy quote

• Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due ... and we wonder why we're a debtor nation!

  Molly Haskell

  Movie, Character, Reality

  5 Copy quote

• I shall never complain of the tedium of the city again.

  Alison Croggon

  Cities, Complaining

  4 Copy quote

• Each album has a different atmosphere. The third album and Houses of the Holy seem to be the two albums that people didn't get off on quite as strongly as the other ones. But I think they contain the basic ingredients for the further pursuance of what we're doing... the turning point to relieve the tedium of repetition.

  Robert Plant

  Thinking, Two, People

  "New Again: Robert Plant". Interview With Emily McDermott, Mark Ginsburg, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 12, 2013.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Men, Wish, Done

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• That's a terrible price to pay because you loved life so much, with the intensity of a thousand suns, and the women and all of it - and then it's all taken away from you. You end up walking the hallways of always to a place called tedium and apathy, day after day after day. Years go by.

  George Jung

  Taken, Years, Apathy

  Interview with Chris Simunek, hightimes.com. August 5, 2015.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a funny thing - the reality is I have no feelings about school. It's long gone. Funnily enough, the bad memories - of which I don't have any left to be honest, I can just remember a sense of tedium - have faded. And teachers that I liked have remained quite vivid. There are three or four left.

  Colin Firth

  Teacher, Memories, School

  "St Trinian's - Colin Firth interview". www.indielondon.co.uk.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Symmetry is tedious, and tedium is the very basis of mourning. Despair yawns.

  Victor Hugo

  Boredom, Mourning, Despair

  'Les Misèrables' (1862) vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 1

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Vanity, People, Would Be

  Bertrand Russell (1969). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872-1914”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• With our progress we have destroyed our only weapon against tedium: that rare weakness we call imagination.

  Oriana Fallaci

  Imagination, Progress, Weakness

  8 Copy quote

• The work that is done in love loses half its tedium and difficulty.

  Thomas Guthrie

  Love, Half, Done

  Thomas Guthrie (1856). “The Gospel in Ezekiel”, p.365

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Pain, Writing, Journey

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.6, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.

  Robert Plant

  Two, Singers, Gigs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• On graduating from school, a studious young man who would withstand the tedium and monotony of his duties has no choice but to lose himself in some branch of science or literature completely irrelevant to his assignment.

  Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

  School, Science, Men

  "oulomb and the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-century France" by C. Stewart Gillmor, Princeton University Press, (pp. 255-261), 1971.

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Failure to spend the [presentation] time wisely and well, failure to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten, and most important of all, failure to maintain attention and interest should be punishable by stoning. There is no excuse for tedium.

  Jay H. Lehr

  Important, Attention, Enlightening

  4 Copy quote

• One day, you don't feel like doing anything. Nothing interests you, everything bores you. Feel more and more empty inside, more and more dissatisfied with yourself and the world in general. Then even that feeling wears off, and you don't feel anything anymore. You become completely indifferent to what goes on around you... You forget how to laugh and cry - you're cold inside and incapable of loving anything or anyone... There's no going back... The disease has a name. It's called deadly tedium.

  Michael Ende

  Names, Bores You, Laughing

  13 Copy quote