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Ennui Quotes

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Ennui Quotes

“In a lifeworld, where we can be what we are, and not what people expect us to be, we can escape a blank and void existence, which is linked to wrecking ennui. Boredom often slips into revulsion and nausea, for not being able to find an identity and not succeeding in acquiring individuality with the quality of authenticity. ("Like a frozen image")”

PeopleExistenceIndividualityAuthenticityVoidBlankLinkedFrozenEscapeImageEnnuiExpectRevulsionSucceedingTo BeSlipWreckingAcquiringBoredomeLife World
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“There is a pointlessness of summer London more awful than anything which fogs or early afternoon twilights are able to evoke, a summer mood of yawning and glazing eyes and little nightmare-ridden sleeps in bored and desperate rooms. With this ennui, evil comes creeping through the city, the evil of indifference and sleepiness and lack of care. At such a time the long-fought temptation is wearily yielded to, and the long-dreamt-of crime is with shoulder-shrugging casualness committed at last.”

EvilSummerLondonIris MurdochEnnuiThe Nice And The Good
Book:The Nice and the Good
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“The more my thoughts wander the harder it gets- everything feels so disconnected. Me and my work, me and the factory, me and society. There's always something in the way. It's like we're touching, but we are not. What am I doing here? I've been living on this planet for more than twenty years, and I still can't talk properly, can't do anything that a machine can't do better.”

WorkEmploymentMeaningBoredomSignificanceEnnuiDisconnection Society
Book:The Factory
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“Sitting to think of what to write will only set your ass on fire, give you headache, twist your face to look stupid, instead, walk around with a blank mind and something from somewhere will fill it up.”

ThinkingWritingIdeasInspirationBrainCreativityMagicThoughtsMadnessIntuitionCleverThoughtAssInsanityHeatContemplationBoredomWriterWritersBlankMuseIdeaPonderingHeadacheMichael Bassey JohnsonHeadEnnuiMusingsMusesPonderArsonRuminationCreative ThoughtsRuminate
Author:Michael Bassey Johnson
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“Mais, j’aurai beau supplier, j’aurai beau me révolter, il n’y aura plus rien pour moi ; je ne serai, désormais, ni heureux, ni malheureux. Je ne peux pas ressusciter. Je vieillirai aussi tranquille que je le suis aujourd’hui dans cette chambre où tant d’êtres ont laissé leur trace, où aucun être n’a laissé la sienne. Cette chambre, on la retrouve à chaque pas. C’est la chambre de tout le monde. On croit qu’elle est fermée, non : elle est ouverte aux quatre vents de l’espace. Elle est perdue au milieu des chambres semblables, comme de la lumière dans le ciel, comme un jour dans les jours, comme moi partout. Moi, moi ! Je ne vois plus maintenant que la pâleur de ma figure, aux orbites profondes, enterrée dans le soir, et ma bouche pleine d’un silence qui doucement, mais sûrement, m’étouffe et m’anéantit. Je me soulève sur mon coude comme sur un moignon d’aile. Je voudrais qu’il m’arrivât quelque chose d’infini !”

DeathHopeHellDepressionIntrovertWearinessEnnuiTediumLethargyWeltschmerz
Book:Hell
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“oh why, at such moments does one's breathing become laboured? Why, by what magic, by what mysterious caprice does the pulse quicken, do tears gush forth from the dreamer's eyes, his pale, moist cheeks burn as his entire being fills with such irresistible delight? Why do whole sleepless nights pass by like a single instant in inexhaustible merriment and happiness, and when the dawn's rosy ray shines through the windows and the daybreak illumines the gloomy room with its dubious fantastic light, such as we have in Petersburg, why does our dreamer, exhausted and weary, throw himself on his bed and fall asleep, his tormented and overwhelmed spirit trembling with ecstasy, while his hear aches with a sweet agony?”

LifeLonelinessEnnui
Book:White Nights
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“For he has faith enough, he feels, if he were really to delve into himself, faith enough to move mountains, but he cannot manage to put his back into it. Once in a while the need to create wells up in him, the longing to see a part of himself set free in a work by him, and for days at a time his being can be tensed with joyous, titanic efforts to mold the clay into his Adam. But he is never able to shape him into a semblance of his image, he does not have enough stamina to maintain the self-discipline that it demands. It make take weeks for him to give up the work, but he does give it up, and irritably asks himself why he should keep on: what more does he have to gain? He has enjoyed the pleasure of creation, the tedium of upbringing remains, to nurse, nurture, and support entirely - why? for whom? He is no pelican, he says. But whatever he says, he is still ill at ease and feels that he has not done justice to the expectations he has of himself. It doesn’t help him to confront these expectations and try to doubt that their demands on him are justified. He is faced with a choice, and he must choose; for life is such that when the first youth is gone, sooner or later - depending on the natural disposition of the person - sooner or later a day dawns when resignation comes to you like a seducer and tempts you, and you have to say farewell to the impossible and accept it.”

CharacterCreativityArtistsEnnui
Author:Jens Peter Jacobsen
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“Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favor and esteem for his valor, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: “Yourself, sir,” replied the other, “by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of my life.”

LifePainHealthDutyBraverySoldierCureEnnuiSafeguardWeary Of LifeNothing To Live ForAntigonusAttitude TheThe Cure Is Worse Than Disease
Book:The Complete Essays
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“Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal.”

ExistenceSolitudeMeaningIsolationModernismSubjectivityMeaninglessnessEnnuiPostwarCollapse Of Meaning
Book:The Spider's House
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“Slim is queer and though Nelson isn't supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side of Brewer took off her shirt while dancing even though she has no tits to speak of and now sits in the kitchen with still bare tits getting herself sick on Southern Comfort and Pepsi. At these parties someone is always in the bathroom being sick or giving themselves a hit or a snort and Nelson minds this too. He doesn't mind any of it very much, he's just tired of being young. There's so much wasted energy to it.”

YouthEnnuiDebauchery1981Nelson Angstrom
Book:Rabbit is Rich
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“La vida extiende su sufrimiento para crecer dentro del alma; un triste reflejo de lo que he llegado a ser se vuelve un aburrido recordatorio de mi soledad. La realidad se desata en un concepto de formas y ángulos que se transfiguran ante mis ojos para contemplar algún tipo de verdad, un tipo de verdad que apesta a desesperación y desolación. En el negro ébano de un abismo eterno, mi vínculo con la humanidad es tan solo un viejo y demacrado cordel. Una extensión hacia la nada. Insuficiente para soportarme si apoyo todo el peso de mi existencia sobre ella, pero porque está ahí afuera, quiero sentir la liberación de un equilibrio compartido. Anhelo, pero resisto todo con mi propia incapacidad para mantener el impulso y, en cada pendiente, la fricción subyacente persigue la voluntad de detenerme. Una vez más, vuelvo a encontrarme inmóvil, indeciso. La indecisión podría considerarse una de las más disruptivas maldiciones; un intervalo de reflexión entre un aliento de muerte y la palpitante procesión en el que uno se pregunta si este complejo nexo de carne animal y espíritu humano, si este febril océano de nudos, si esta trama de éxtasis apocalíptico merece algo parecido a la piedad o, tal vez, a la admiración. De todas formas, antes de que se pueda pensar en una respuesta, el intervalo termina, y la hoja inquebrantable de la alienación unge una vez más las pulsaciones de silencio.”

SoledadEnnuiPesimismoAlienacionDesesperacionDesolacion
Book:Neuma
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“Celui qui souffre d'un mal caractérisé n'a pas le droit de se plaindre : il a une occupation. Les grands souffrants ne s'ennuient jamais : la maladie les remplit, comme le remords nourrit les grands coupables. Car toute souffrance intense suscite un simulacre de plénitude et propose à la conscience une réalité terrible, qu'elle ne saurait éluder ; tandis que la souffrance sans matière dans ce deuil temporel qu'est l' ennui n'oppose à la conscience rien qui l'oblige à une démarche fructueuse. Comment guérir d'un mal non localisé et suprêmement imprécis, qui frappe le corps sans y laisser d'empreinte, qui s'insinue dans l'âme sans y marquer de signe ? Il ressemble à une maladie à laquelle nous aurions survécu, mais qui aurait absorbé nos possibilités, nos réserves d' attention et nous aurait laissés impuissants à combler le vide qui suit la disparition de nos affres et l'évanouissement de nos tourments. L'enfer est un havre auprès de ce dépaysement dans le temps, de cette langueur vide et prostrée où rien ne nous arrête sinon le spectacle de l'univers qui se carie sous nos regard. Quelle thérapeutique employer contre une maladie dont nous ne nous souvenons plus et dont les suites empiètent sur nos jours ? Comment inventer un remède à l'existence, comment conclure cette guérison sans fin ? Et comment se remettre de sa naissance ? L'ennui, cette convalescence incurable ...”

EnnuiMaladieConvalescenceDésespoirDécomposition
Book:Précis de décomposition
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“From the time I arrived in British East Africa at the indifferent age of four and went through the barefoot stage of early youth hunting wild pig with the Nandi, later training racehorses for a living, and still later scouting Tanganyika and the waterless bush country between the Tana and Athi Rivers, by aeroplane, for elephant, I remained so happily provincial I was unable to discuss the boredom of being alive with any intelligence until I had gone to London and lived there for a year. Boredom, like hookworm, is endemic.”

AdventureEnglandLondonBoredomEnnuiUrban LifeUrbanism
Book:West with the Night
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“Refuser de faire quelque chose parce qu'on l'a déjà fait, parce qu'on a déjà vécu l'expérience, conduit rapidement à une destruction, pour soi-même comme pour les autres, de toute raison de vivre comme de tout futur possible, et vous plonge dans un ennui pesant qui finit par se transformer en une amertume atroce, accompagnée de haine et de rancoeur à l'égard de ceux qui appartiennent encore à la vie.”

VieEnnuiExpérience
Book:The Possibility of an Island
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“Repetition resembles even the foundations of all reality, the productivity of the Holy Trinity, which St. John Damascene describes in the language of imaging: “The Son is the Father's image, and the Spirit the Son's, through which Christ dwelling in man makes him after his own image.” To despise this facet of reality echoes the Lacanian “solid hatred addressed to being,” and depicts even God as subject to ennui before a kenotic descent.”

RealityRepetitionTrinityEnnuiKenosisJacques Lacan
Book:The Invention of Work
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“There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes – Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference – Where the Meanings, are – None may teach it – Any – 'Tis the seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air – When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, 'tis like the Distance On the look of Death –”

LightDeathPoetryMeaningBeingSeverityEnnuiDickinson
Author:Emily Dickinson
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“When you are unemployed, weekends are seven days long.”

HumorSchoolWorkInterestingEducationWeekHumourSevenEmploymentBoredBoredomEmployeeFrustrationSundaySatireJobWeekendApathyUnemploymentSaturdayJokeEmployedFridayEmployersUnemployedDissatisfactionRestlessnessWearinessMonotonyEmployeesDullnessEnnuiEmployerLethargyWeekdaysBoreFlatnessWeekendsWeeksEmployUnconcernWeekdayUninterestingDrearinessRepetitivenessLassitude TediumRestiveness
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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