Quotations about Boredom

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health; nothing is worse for your health than boredom. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. ~Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness


Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence. ~Leo Stein


Boredom flourishes too, when you feel safe. It's a symptom of security. ~Eugene Ionesco


The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war. ~Norman Mailer


I am never bored anywhere: being bored is an insult to oneself. ~Jules Renard


Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is. ~Thomas Szasz


Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true. ~William Inge


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


Boredom is a sickness the cure for which is work; pleasure is only a palliative. ~Le Duc de Lévis, Mémoires


Punctuality is the virtue of the bored. ~Evelyn Waugh


Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face. ~Charlotte Whitton


When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving. ~-Steven Wright


All man's troubles come from not knowing how to sit still in one room. ~Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670


The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. ~Dorothy Parker (Thanks, Kaitlin)