"Boredom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out against the enchantment of Venice in spring. I felt it a concession when McFarlane admitted the loveliness of Venice by starlight, and his languor dropped from him under the spell, and I knew the game of boredom was up when, in this starlight, he decided that, after all, there might be more in the Tintorettos than he thought if only he had time to study them. But Easter holidays do not last for ever, and the day soon came when the men from Munich had to go back to where all was for the ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... few visits to Archulera, he had scarcely noticed the girl. That was doubtless one reason why the old man had welcomed him. He had come here simply to go deer-hunting with Archulera, to eat his goat meat and chile, to get away from the annoyance and boredom of his life in town, and into the crude, primitive atmosphere which he had loved as a boy. Catalina had been to him just the usual slovenly figure of a Mexican woman, ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... would be to the pirates. The three watchers would be put in the bag, and the men from the sea would walk into a neat trap. This reflection seemed to take all the colour out of Heritage's prospect. Peril and heroism were not to be his lot—only boredom. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... unuttered. Beach Thomas, the most amiable of men, the Peter Pan who went a bird-nesting on battlefields, a lover of beauty and games and old poems and Greek and Latin tags, and all joy in life—what had he to do with war?—looked bored with an infinite boredom, irritable with a scornful impatience of unnecessary detail, gazed through his gold-rimmed spectacles with an air of extreme detachment (when Percy Robinson rebuilt the map with dabs and dashes on a blank sheet of paper), and said, "I've got more than I can write, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... pickets in a misty dawn in April. But to us they never did come. And the effort to be always ready, with so little hope of ever having any reward, was a real test of discipline—continuing as it did month after month in a country where unrelieved monotony tempted us all to the slackness of utter boredom. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... back with that gesture of toleration and infinite boredom common to his kind and ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... type so often met with among the upper classes in Hungary: quite something English in appearance—well set-up, well-dressed, well-groomed from the top of his smooth brown hair to the tips of his immaculately-shod feet—in the eyes an expression of habitual boredom, further accentuated by the slight, affected stoop of the shoulders and a few premature lines round the nose and mouth; and about his whole personality that air of high-breeding and of good, pure blood which is one of the chief characteristics ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Felix's heart as he came downstairs to breakfast in the schoolroom. A sensation of feathery lightness was in him, of speed as well: he could rise above every obstacle in the world, only—there were no obstacles in the world to rise above. Boredom, despair, and pessimism, he suddenly realised, meant deficiency of energy merely. "Birds can rise above everything—and so can I!"—as though he possessed a robin's ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... was not Deb, was too sweet and good for words. She put the little hired girl on the front seat with the groom, and sat in the body of the waggonette to talk to Guthrie and to take care of his child. There was no awkward shyness on her part now, and no boredom on his. Little Harry fused them. She had remembered to bring fresh milk and rusks for a possibly hungry baby, and he sat on her lap as she fed him, and cooed to her when his mouth was not too full, and seemed to forget that any other foster-mother ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... of identical judgments, which nobody endeavours to verify, every one ends by repeating what he learnt at school, till there come to be names and things which nobody would venture to meddle with. For a modern reader the perusal of Homer results incontestably in immense boredom; but who would venture to say so? The Parthenon, in its present state, is a wretched ruin, utterly destitute of interest, but it is endowed with such prestige that it does not appear to us as it really is, but with all ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... chair she listened to the insidious little tune that grew more captivating with each repetition, meanwhile letting her eyes wander happily over the circling figures of the dancers. Glamour overspread the scene; she was in the mood to see only the gracious and gay. For the moment the obvious boredom of confirmed pleasure-seekers escaped her entirely; the efforts of spoiled youth and jaded old age to escape from themselves had no place in the pattern of the life she saw before her. No, on the contrary, as she gazed through half-closed eyes, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... day belongs to the 8th and 19th Brigades. My own were spectators only; deeply interested, and our own fate might at any moment become involved, but harassed with heat and flies and the unspeakable boredom born of long warfare, which even a battle can disperse only in part. Stories filtered through of the heroic work of the Seaforths and Manchesters and of the 47th and 59th Sikhs. Report persisted that the Seaforths' ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... average congregation, that collective odour of humanity encountered in church, theatre, or court-rooms. The smell of poverty was mingled with the heavy scents of fashionable women, who, in the minority, made their presence felt by their showy gowns, rustling movements, and attitudes of superior boredom. In a vast building like this extremes touch with eagerness on the part of the poor, to whom these furtive views of the rich and indolent brought with them a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... him, what regret he would feel, "if he had now to go to some trivial country of plains, where he would die of boredom!" ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... a request, and Rose shrank from it; but she said lightly, 'We shall be meeting often. You will see more of us than you will care for, I'm afraid. The Malletts are rather ubiquitous in Radstowe. It's fortunate for us, or Caroline would die of boredom, but I don't know how it ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... worried over the possibility of his having had another tilt with the Scotch and sodas. He relieved her of that fear, and she restrained her curiosity until boredom seized her. The silence and the scratching of his pen began to ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... it—from Jeekes and to hand it to Robin Greve would, thought Bruce, restore his prestige as an amateur detective, at any rate in his own eyes. Moreover, a chat with Jeekes over the whole affair seemed a Heaven-sent exit from the impasse of boredom into which he had drifted ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... green. Sleep breathed on my joints and eyelids, sleep hummed in my ears; it reigned in the dim cathedral. The congregation stirred and stretched; they moaned, they groaned aloud; they yawned upon a singing note, as you may sometimes hear a dog when he has reached the tragic bitterest of boredom. In vain the preacher thumped the table; in vain he singled and addressed by name particular hearers. I was myself perhaps a more effective excitant; and at least to one old gentleman the spectacle of my successful ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vacation banks to help the girls save for their summer outings, the committee hopes to discourage some of the haphazard picnic park dissipation. In summer many trades are slack, girls are idle, and out of sheer boredom they hang around the parks seeking amusement. It is only a theory, perhaps, but Mrs. Israels and the others on her committee believe that if many of these girls knew that a country vacation were within the possibilities, they would gladly save money towards ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... that devilry demands from him. Those places were the last word in dullness. I have been at Hampstead tea-parties which gave you a little more of the joy of living. I have watched the nuts and the girls, and what have I seen? Boredom. Heavy eyes, nodding heads, a worn-out face, saying with determination, "I WILL be gay!" Perhaps you have seen the pictures of those luxuriously upholstered and appointed establishments: music, gaiety, sparkle, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... was as settled and peaceful, as conscious of its imperial responsibilities, as susceptible to boredom, as greedy of amusement, could show as numerous a leisured class, and believed as firmly in money, as our own. What is more important for our purpose, it was questioning the truth of its religion as we are to-day questioning the truth of ours. Lucian was the most vehement of the questioners. Of ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the sleeve and drew him towards Loge, who, still seated on the deck with his long legs stretched out in front of him, was now yawning with a cynical affectation of boredom. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... the crowd, and Ellen never knew who had spoken, but for the first time that afternoon her boredom was relieved. It was rather pleasant to have anyone think that Arthur Alce was turning to her from Joanna ... it would be a triumph indeed if he actually did turn ... for the first time she began to ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... Boredom on a long, interstellar trip can be quite a problem ... but the entertainment technique the government dreamed up for this one was ...
— Subjectivity • Norman Spinrad
... and a stamp, a wriggle and a stamp, in a solemn walk, or prance, round and round, to the accompaniment of a monotonous phrase thumped on a tom- tom and a monotonous, melancholy chant, uttered in a minor key interspersed every few minutes with an emphatic howl, produces a feeling of boredom, therefore the Fans softly stole away and went to bed, which disgusted the Ncomi, and there was a row. In the dance I saw the same thing happened, only when the Ncomi saw the audience getting thin they complained and said ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... ghostliness you follow me), I feel no such attraction. Or if one Bows to my sympathy for the briefest space, Snap—it is gone! And, worst of all to tell, What broke it is not in the least dislike But utter boredom. Now.... ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... in themselves. The truth is that, as a rule, men are interested in every mortal thing except themselves. They have a habit of taking themselves for granted, and that habit is responsible for nine-tenths of the boredom and despair on the face of ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... Paragot suffered the boredom of a provisional condition of existence. He went to bed early, for lack of evening entertainment, and rose late in the morning for lack of daily occupation. With what he termed "the crapulous years," he had divested himself of his former associates and habits. Friends ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... revived it, unless Charity had been talking. He had not thought of any one's punishing him for neglecting her. But if Dyckman had enlisted in her cause—well, Cheever was afraid of hardly anything in the world except boredom and the appearance of fear. He answered Zada ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... have quarrelled through sheer boredom before they reached Southampton. We, by virtue of our craft, were anything but ordinary men. A large percentage of the tales of the world, the thirty-nine that cannot be told to ladies and the one that can, are common property coming of a common stock. We told ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... piratical invaders. A long series of warlike and adventurous peoples—Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Normans—built up England and imparted to it their spirit. The English were, it was said, "a people for whom pain and death are nothing, and who only fear hunger and boredom." But for over eight hundred years they have never been reinforced by new invaders, and the inevitable consequences have followed. There has been a gradual killing out of the warlike stocks, a process immensely accelerated during the nineteenth ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... band of, say, twenty or thirty men and a couple of officers stationed near some culvert or bridge. Their tents were pitched on a bit of stony ground, with not a trace of vegetation near it, and here they stayed for months together, half dead from the boredom of their existence. Nevertheless such work was quite essential to the success of the campaign, for the attitude of the Dutch colonists up-country has been throughout the war an uncertain factor, and if these long lines of communication ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... straight down upon it, and the same idea seemed to come at the same moment into Captain Ashburnham's head. His face hitherto had, in the wonderful English fashion, expressed nothing whatever. Nothing. There was in it neither joy nor despair; neither hope nor fear; neither boredom nor satisfaction. He seemed to perceive no soul in that crowded room; he might have been walking in a jungle. I never came across such a perfect expression before and I never shall again. It was insolence and not insolence; it was modesty ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... fashionable quarter. The public restaurants were crammed with luxury-loving men and women,—men and women to whom the mere suggestion of a quiet dinner in their own homes would have acted as a menace of infinite boredom,—and these gilded and refined eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless shouting, and much banter between drivers ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... eyes closed, face under the full glare of the reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... no subject upon which he has not something worth while to say. His memory is remarkable; he can quote poet after poet, or compose a poem on anything that crops up at the table. I do not think it can be said that Chesterton is a good listener. This is not in any way conceit or boredom, but is rather that he is always thinking out some new story or article or poem. Yet he is a good host in the niceties of the table; he knows if you want salt; he does not forget that wine is the symbol ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... still so hopeless at the sport that at each shot she had to have her hands placed for her in the correct grip. The other two were glad when she was called home, so that Patricia could enjoy the undivided attention of the coach. The coach was glad, but only because his boredom was diminished by half; and Patricia, after two mornings alone with him, decided that she knew all of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... and women. They passed from the streets to the restaurants, from the restaurants to the theatre, out into the streets again, back to the restaurants, and once more into the streets. Sogrange was like a glutton. The mention of bed was hateful to him. For three days they existed without a moment's boredom. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... your friend as he is. You know what I am, my dear Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant. You know that at length I gave it up, and declined to guess any more. Then how can I possibly ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... as welcome as the circumstances permitted, and he sat on the sand under a huge umbrella while the girls frolicked in the water. The boys came back for luncheon, and helped to divide the boredom of the newest arrival, though they made uncomplimentary remarks behind his back, and Betty was in constant fear lest some unpleasant incident should occur. She had to remember that ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... Malignon had vowed that he would be more skilful in his attack. He had just reacquired influence over her, during a fit of boredom which had come on with the close of a wearying winter, when the usual dissipations, dinners, balls, and first-night performances were beginning to pall on her with their dreary monotony. And at last, her curiosity aroused, allured ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... shrill bargaining, every man in the place jumped, and not one was quicker of recovery than wee Bobby. Instantly ashamed, as an intelligent little dog who knew the import of the gun should be, Bobby denied his alarm in a tiny pink yawn of boredom. Then he went briskly about his urgent business of ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... amusing, I agree to that. There are moments of empty and horrible boredom. But they become more and more rare in proportion as one grows older. In short, LIVING seems to me a business for which I was not made, ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... of the European's boredom whilst watching the Nautch Dance in which the Indian Nautch girl, fully clothed, indeed in high tight bodice and ankle-length, voluminous skirt, will drive her native audience clean crazy with the tapping of her feet and slight, undulating movements of the slender body and rod-like ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... often due to bad ventilation of the room, more often still to boredom. A good plan in this case is to raise the pitch a semitone; it is often just as easy for singing, and invariably produces ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... moving. In the mouth of the clergyman, they were false, indecent. She tried to read. But again the tedium and the sense of the falsity of the spoken word put her off. She went to stay with girl friends. At first she thought it splendid. But then the inner boredom came on, it seemed to her all nothingness. And she felt always belittled, as if never, never could she stretch her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... three guineas for each dozen times he sings particular songs, the publisher of the song in question being his paymaster. Of this type of song a contemporary Musical Journal states:—"Every serious musician knows it, and, scenting the boredom, tries to avoid it. It is highly sentimental, it moves within a limited scope, emotionally and technically, and it deals with a few well-worn subjects. Gardens, spring, sunshine, flowers—these are favourite themes. If only, the singer tells us, he could have a cottage on the ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... pain grows into a custom. The agonies of Prometheus and Ixion must after a little while have ceased to cause anything more than boredom. As soon as the mind is accustomed to what is before it, there is an end of grief. It is the series of unexpected blows that hurts. And so, Gordon after his first week found that life was not so hard after ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... middle-ageing Anglo-Indian; and, secondly, how to impart any touch of novelty to the inevitable catastrophe that must attend this union. The first she has managed by a very cunning suggestion of the mingled jealousy, curiosity and boredom that drove Stella into the arms of her elderly suitor; the second by a variety of devices, to indicate which would be to give away the whole intrigue—one, I may say, whose climax is not nearly so visible from afar as that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... always the same jolting; always the same scene, till our minds wearied. Then, suddenly rounding a bend, we came upon something which made every one of us forget boredom. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... unflagging counsel; even the judge became all but inattentive on the point, before it was finally dropped on an intimation from the jury that they had made up their minds about the chains; but no trace of boredom had crossed the keen, alert face of the unknown ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... certainly have gone out of my mind. I particularly noticed on this evening that various points were passed over in silence by my audience which are invariably taken by others. In the second part of my entertainment I make a speech in the character of the "Member for Boredom," anent the use of black sticking-plaster in public hospitals. This is intended by me to be more of a satire than a humorous incident, and I am supposed to bore my audience as the honourable gentleman is supposed to bore the House; but on this occasion the nurses, who understood ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... habitue. There was nothing to do. Most of the theatres were shut. The streets were damp and dirty. It was all very well for the generals, appearing every night in the glare and glitter of the footlights; but for the rank and file the occupation of London spelt pure boredom. ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... almost a year since I saw them, the Over Lords of the World, and I had forgotten their appearance. Sprawled on the glowing silks of their cushioned couches, eyes closed in languid boredom, they were like huge white slugs. Swollen to tremendous size by the indolent luxuriousness of their lives, the flesh that was not concealed by the bright hued web of their robes was pasty white, and bagged and folded where the shrunken muscles beneath refused support. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... resource in life— they are left empty then. Sometimes a man's life is so poor, that he is driven instinctively to prize his vice and to live by it; one may say for a fact that often men are vicious from boredom. ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... Or the dwarfish lemon tree with its golden balls and lacquered leaves, short and dumpy, like a woman who is small and ugly, but rich? Or the much-praised cypress, long, thin, and lean, which seems the tree, not of grief, but of boredom? They say that it looks very sad upon a grave; but it is like a German flunkey in court mourning, who does not dare to lift his arms or turn his head, for fear that he may somehow ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... George rising, with evident signs of boredom. "The House will excuse me. I am tired. I have been out all day aeroplaning with Mr. Churchill and Mr. Bonar Law, with a view to inspect the new national training camp. I had the Home Rule Bill with me along with the Welsh Disestablishment Bill and the Land Bill, and I am afraid that I lost ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... hostess were receiving their guests. The brother and sister were singularly unlike. Sir Aubrey Mayo was very tall and thin, the pallor of his face accentuated by the blackness of his smoothly brushed hair and heavy black moustache. His attitude was a mixture of well-bred courtesy and languid boredom. He seemed too tired even to keep the single eye-glass that he wore in position, for it dropped continually. By contrast the girl at his side appeared vividly alive. She was only of medium height and very ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... mean that I was right when I was a child, or does it mean that I have never grown since then, that the child is not the man's father, but the man? and that I came into the world with all my faculties complete, and have only learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of boredom? ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... virtues, prejudices, limitations and peculiar tricks of thought. Being almost incredibly beautiful, she had learned very early in life that the desired (not always the desirable) is powerful to sway men; the possessed begins to lose its sway; the habit of possession easily succumbs to boredom, and then power ceases. Even Commodus, accordingly, had never owned her in the sense that men own slaves; she had reserved to herself self-mastery, which called for cunning, courage and a certain ruthlessness, albeit tempered by ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... being brought to bear on such problems as the effect on humans who are deprived of their sensory perceptions, or whose sensory systems are overloaded, or who are exposed to excessive boredom or anxiety or sense of unreality, or who must do their job under hypnosis or hypothermia (cooling of ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... this siege of Trin; there had been great fatigues and many losses. But of boredom, after De Grammont's arrival, there was never any throughout the army; no more weariness in the trenches, no more dulness among the generals. Everywhere, this man sought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... soberly and sanely enough. Five chairs were set round the plain deal table, for who should Sir Walter bring with him but his young relative and secretary, Horne Fisher. Sir Walter listened with grave attention, and his secretary with polite boredom, to the string of episodes by which the police had traced the flying rebel from the steps of the hotel to the solitary tower beside the sea. There at least he was cornered between the moors and the breakers; and the scout sent by Wilson reported him as writing ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... salvia, as by a miracle, blossoms on the jasmine? What if the former stifles the latter? Indeed, one can escape boredom, but not love. One can flee the quidnuncs of the salon, but not the questioning perplexity of one's heart. A truce now ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... leather chaps, the undecorated saddle, bridle and spurs, his entire work-a-day outfit contrasted vividly with the gaudy get-up of most of the other riders. Captain Jack moved along easily and freely, but quietly, and with an air of utter boredom with all the show and confusion about him. The Ramblin' Kid's attitude, whole appearance, matched perfectly the mood of his horse. He sat loosely in the saddle and carelessly smoked a cigarette. The truth ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... time in a state of absolute boredom. Little Christian Frederick had gone out with his nurse, and the street was uninteresting, dusty, hot, and thronged by country people making their Saturday purchases. She did not care to look out of the window, but sat leaning back in her most comfortable armchair, yawning in front of the glass. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the local entertainments as custom required, and suffered from suspended animation under the influence of the deadly dulness which prevailed at most of them, but in that she was not peculiar, and she could conceal her boredom more successfully than almost anybody else I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... trunk, washed, and changed. The journey had thoroughly exhausted him. The constant presence of a stranger during the last two days, the many fruitless discussions, had completely upset his nerves. A certain bitterness, which was neither boredom nor anger, accumulated mysteriously in the depths of his being. He was annoyed with himself for his lack of courage, but his heart ached. He went up to the window and looked out into the garden. It was an old-fashioned ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... go at once then. How the time has gone!" Reluctantly enough they hunted up Goliath, who in thorough boredom had returned to his place on the hearth-rug in the big bedroom, gathered together their candles, and found their way to the cellar. Cynthia had thoughtfully requested a tin biscuit-box from the grocer, and in this they packed their candles, ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... consciousness of the system in which they lie, so that they may attain a mutual relevance and ideally support one another. But what could relevance or support be worth if the things to be buttressed were themselves worthless? It is not to organise pain, ugliness, and boredom that reason can be called into ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Boredom gave way to wonder. The thing fascinated you, against your will, dragged you back to the sidewalk and held you there open-eyed. No longer was it regiments of men marching, but something uncanny, inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava sweeping ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... "Exactly. Boredom is simply romanticism with a morning-after thirst. You're panting for romance, for something bizarre. Egypt and St. Petersburg and Buenos Ayres and Samoa have all become commonplace to you. You've overdone them. That's why you're back here in New York waiting with stretched nerves ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... other be unreceptive to ideas. In description you must reckon with the imaginative faculty, with the possibility that your hearers cannot visualize what you tell them—and you must make your words brief. In narration you must vivify emotional torpor; but lest in your efforts to inveigle boredom you yourself should induce it, you must have a wary ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... laugh while spring blossoms. Let us love our babies, the little dears, and kiss our wives. Yes, that is moral and healthy; the world is not a shivering convent, marriage is not a tomb. Shame on those who find in it only sadness, boredom, and sleep. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... a solitary breakfast, his noble friend having risen some hours previously and gone for an early walk upon the hill. But he was far from feeling any trace of boredom, since an open letter beside his plate appeared to provide him with an ample fund ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... sitting back in an easy chair in his quarters, glancing out of a window with a look of absolute boredom, received a ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... hardly know what to tell master. We're certainly seeing some unusual things, and for two months we've had no time for boredom. The latest wonder is always the most astonishing, and if this progression keeps up, I can't imagine what its climax will be. In my opinion, we'll never again have ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... "The Seagull" was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in Petersburg. It was a fiasco. The actors did not know their parts; in the theatre there was "a strained condition of boredom and bewilderment." The notices in the press were prejudiced and stupid. Not wishing to see or meet anyone, Chekhov kept out of sight after the performance, and by next morning was in the train on his way back to Melihovo. The subsequent ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... thinking of: the listless couples wearing out their lives in shabby watering places, and hanging on the favour of hotel acquaintances; or the proud quarrelling wretches shut up alone in a fine house because they're too good for the only society they can get, and trying to cheat their boredom by squabbling with their tradesmen and spying on their servants. No doubt there are such cases; but I don't recognize either of us in those dismal figures. Why, to do it would be to admit that our life, yours ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... Peyster writhe upon her second maid's undentable bed. If only she actually did possess the divine gift of defective hearing with which Mr. Pyecroft had afflicted her! But in the same loud voice, trying to conceal her own boredom, Mary read on, on, ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... divulging the secret of his novel to him. Imagining him to be an ardent young man of poetic feeling and having long dreamed of securing a listener, he had, during the early days of their acquaintance, on one occasion read aloud two chapters to him. The young man had listened without disguising his boredom, had rudely yawned, had vouchsafed no word of praise; but on leaving had asked for the manuscript that he might form an opinion of it at his leisure, and Andrey Antonovitch had given it him. He had not returned the manuscript since, though he dropped in every day, and had turned off all ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... young diplomat no chance. But once a minister, always a minister. Having lifted you out of the secretary class we can't demote you. Your days of deciphering cablegrams are over, and if you don't die of fever, of boredom, or brandy, call us up in a year or two and we will ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Japanese toy, the other a Dresden china shepherdess; all the colours of the rainbow clash in a barbaric discord of notes. And in a corner of this fantastic room, Huysmans lies back indifferently on the sofa, with the air of one perfectly resigned to the boredom of life. Something is said by my learned friend who is to write for the new periodical, or perhaps it is the young editor of the new periodical who speaks, or (if that were not impossible) the taciturn Englishman who accompanies ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... boredom!" The girl's laugh sounded rather hard. "Don't you think," she asked, after a moment, "that we should bore each other even worse if we ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... lavender kid gloves, he was a sight worth driving miles to see, and he gave his audiences the best entertainment they had had in many a day, shouting jingles at them in the midst of his speeches and mercilessly ridiculing the Republicans. Here was none of the boredom of most political speeches, none of the long sonorous sentences with classical allusions which the big-name orators of the day poured out. His bold statements, his clipped rapid-fire sentences held the people's attention whether they agreed ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... speculative, was in the care of Mrs. Burton, alternately quarrelling vigorously with little Cedric Burton whose intellectual leanings provoked her most ardent contempt, and teasing the luckless Scooter out of sheer boredom till all the animal's ideas in life centred in a ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... There would have been archery, skittles, dancing—social amusements in which they would have partaken as members of a conscious community. Now they had nothing, nothing except Mr. Bodiham's forbidding Boys' Club and the rare dances and concerts organised by himself. Boredom or the urban pleasures of the county metropolis were the alternatives that presented themselves to these poor youths. Country pleasures were no more; they had been stamped out by ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... window started; her apathy vanished; her expression of boredom gave place to one of such lively anticipation as to draw the attention of the two other women. A magic change came over her; she became suddenly animated, alive, atingle in every nerve; her eyes sparkled and a new color flooded her cheeks. The alteration ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... her long exposure, and that if she must lie still on a lounge for two weeks, the least the family could do would be to humor her in everything, and spend as much time as possible with her, or she would certainly die of boredom. She passed the entire day in making and unfolding plans, looking up the sailing dates of steamships, and writing letters of introduction for Austin. By night she had the satisfaction of knowing that Weston's offer for the south meadow had been accepted, that the Wallacetown Bank and the insurance ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... tenderfoot—like for instance some citizeness newly banished from Manteno. Or like some Porter burgher's unfaithful wife or troublesome girlfriend whom he'd personally carted out beyond the ridges of cleaned-out hot dust that help guard such places, and then abandoned in revenge or from boredom—and they call themselves civilized, ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... what with her embarrassment lest others should understand, and her own marked ignorance of the language, she found great difficulty in making a free translation. "Upon my word, I wish you understood French, or some other tongue, so that we could escape from this boredom. Does the poor little prisoner have much of this to endure? Cannot we escape to the ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... classes and Mrs. Grundy. He never aped aristocracy in his household. He would go to a tavern for his oysters and a glass of punches simply as they did in Ben Jonson's days; and I have heard of his doing so from a sensation of boredom at a very great house indeed,—a house for the sake of an admission to which, half Bayswater would sell their grandmothers' bones to a surgeon. This kind of thing stamped him in our polite days as one of the old school, and was exceedingly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to popular enthusiasm. It must be bewildering to men brought up, let us say, in the Hanna school of politics. For here is this nation which sixteen years ago vibrated ecstatically to that magic word "Prosperity"; to-day statistical rhetoric about size induces little but excessive boredom. If you wish to drive an audience out of the hall tell it how rich America is; if you wish to stamp yourself an echo of the past talk to us young men about the Republican Party's understanding with God in respect to bumper crops. But talk to us ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... excessive toil that his heavens have usually been places where nothing ever happened or changed. Fatigue produces the illusion that only rest is needed for happiness; but when men have rested for a time, boredom drives them to renewed activity. For this reason, a happy life must be one in which there is activity. If it is also to be a useful life, the activity ought to be as far as possible creative, not merely predatory or defensive. But creative activity requires ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... say another thing, just endure the temporary boredom of being trotted about to have things explained to him, which he hadn't any intention of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the moment he feels the effects of the weather— A mild go of fever—a touch of the sun— He arrives with a jerk at the end of his tether, And finds your attractions a bit overdone; Impatiently conscious of boredom and worry, He sits in his misery, scowling at grief, With a face like a pallid rechauffee of curry, And a head like ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... whose large dark head and heavy shoulders look as if they sustained the whole weight of an intolerable world. His features, designed for sensuous composure, brood in a sad and sulky resignation to the boredom of delay. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... five, six, Dahn!" whereupon we brought our hands smartly down to our sides and turned our heads to the front again. We marched to and fro saluting imaginary officers with our left hands, it may have been twenty times, it may have been fifty, we were so overcome with infinite boredom that we regarded everything with complete apathy and could not trouble to count. Then, by way of variety, we saluted with our right hands, and some more dreary minutes passed by. Then we stood to attention and saluted to the front. Finally, in order to complete our mastery of the art, each man ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... seen the face of the seeress. Now that the match was close to the fuse, Madalena had a wild impulse to draw back. It was not too late. Nothing irrevocable had been done. Ruthven Smith's acceptance of the invitation to Valley House would mean only a few days of boredom for his fellow guests, unless—she herself made the next move ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... shaken and sulky with little to say. There were great pauses in the talk. I thought how I congratulated Carrot, the cheerful and irresponsible, on his escape. Assuredly his would-be captors would have seemed to him dull dogs. Of course he would have thoroughly deserved ordinary boredom. But theirs was like a London fog. So it fell about that I had much time to give heed to the Black Watch as they chattered over their fire hard by. One was telling tales of lions, tales where the terror ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... when we stopped she sat in silence, regarding me with an air of expectant boredom. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... just what Leo said," Dick answered; and he knew that Paula's boredom and nervousness had been banished for some time and that she was listening with an interest almost eager. "In my way of thinking, and in accord with my temperament, the most horrible spiritual suffering I can imagine would be to kiss a woman ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... knew or cared about. He might have had London at his beck and call, and yet of all that the metropolis might mean to a millionaire, he had been able to think of nothing better than that it should send old Kervick to him, to help beguile his boredom with dominoes and mess-room stories! Pah! ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... extraordinarily thin sandwiches, and a dry, pale wine that Claire found at first rather distasteful. Claire sat with a little group composed of Mrs. Condor, Ned Stillman, a fashionable young man, Phil Edington, who frankly confessed boredom at all things musical except one-steps and fox-trots, and two or three artistic-looking souls who pretended to be quite shocked by young ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... seven rooms and bath, and only half an hour from the depot. But this is not for one moment admitting the contention of the lords of literature that the air-castle has a monopoly of joy, while the seven rooms and bath have a monopoly of disillusionized boredom and anguish of mind. If your before-mentioned apparatus is only in working order, you can have no end of joy out of the cottage. And any morning before breakfast you can build another, and vastly superior, air-castle on the vacant land behind ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... character-sketcher, to assert that the style and matter of most of his work is always tiresome, frequently childish, and the subject often morbid and unhealthy; and, further, that his method is tedious to the last degree of boredom; for, as a writer, if I may judge him fairly by his translators, he is didactic and prosy, and never more tedious than when his dialogue is intended to be at its very crispest. As a playwright ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... hostess tiresome flights of imagination to answer. Clo was far from regretting her move, however. If Churn were absent long, or if he went out again, Kit said that she would return as an escape from boredom. ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... vigil he had begun, but there was no boredom in it for Billy Magee. He was too great a lover of contrast for that. As he looked around on the ill-assorted group he guarded, he compared them with the happier people of the inn's summer nights, about whom the ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... art-loving of us the hours spent in galleries of pictures and statues, or listening to music at concerts, are largely stolen from our real life of real interests and real pleasures; that there enters into them a great proportion of effort and boredom; at the very best that we do not enjoy (nor expect to enjoy) them at all in the same degree as a good dinner in good company, or a walk in bright, bracing weather, let alone, of course, fishing, or hunting, or digging ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Economy covered every scrap of gilding with green gauze; all the furniture wore holland covers. Though it was impossible to feel a shade of uneasiness as to the wealth of the inhabitants, at the end of half an hour no one could suppress a yawn. Boredom perched in every nook; the curtains hung dolefully; the dining-room was like Harpagon's. Even if Lousteau had not known all about Malaga, he could have guessed that the notary's real ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... Popular Concerts, or both, very perceptibly ameliorates its manners. But none of these breaches in the Englishman's castle-house can be made without a cannonade of books and pianoforte music. The books and music cannot be kept out, because they alone can make the hideous boredom of the hearth bearable. If its victims may not live real lives, they may at least read about imaginary ones, and perhaps learn from them to doubt whether a class that not only submits to home life, but actually values itself on it, is really a class worth belonging to. For the sake ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... culture as Providence gave her in the sterile nothingnesses which are called feminine accomplishments. She did not paint figures out of drawing in meagre water-colours; she had not devoted years of her life to the inflicting on polite audiences the boredom of Italian bravuras, which they could hear better sung by a third-rate professional singer in a metropolitan music-hall. I am afraid she had no other female accomplishments than those by which the sempstress or embroideress earns her daily bread. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nine of us; and by the dear old Normandy route, for the sake of the voyage, as in old times; towers of Dieppe in the morning-light; and the lovely road to the capital! Just three days in Paris, and home by any of the other routes. It's the drive we want. Boredom in wet weather, we defy; we have our Concert—an hour at night and we're sure of sleep.' It had a sweet simple air, befitting him; as when in bygone days they travelled with the joy of children. For travelling shook Nataly out of her troubles and gave her something of the child's inheritance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... principle of the larger the dog the smaller the custodian; while the donkeys were the only creatures unmoved by their surroundings, for they slept peaceably through the procession, occasionally waking up to bray their sense of boredom. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... other forms of offensive cuteness. Bureaucracies. Stupid people. Easy listening music. Television (except for cartoons, movies, and "Star Trek" classic). Business suits. Dishonesty. Incompetence. Boredom. COBOL. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... was an absolute and complete failure; the guests displayed the forced gaiety and real depression, and constrained absentmindedness, of genuine and hopeless boredom. Except for Lady Everard's ceaseless flow of empty prattle the pauses would have been too obvious. Edith, for whom it was a dreary anti-climax, was rather silent. Aylmer talked more, and a little more loudly, than usual, and looked worn. Bruce, whom champagne ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... crossed his legs and looked distrait or had shown in some such trivial manner that he was bored, which so exasperated Schloezer that he barred him out, and invited Mr. Bayard instead, who perhaps loved music less, but showed no outward signs of boredom. ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... the ancients are "the despair of the emulator." Voltaire said. "If the admirers of Homer were honest, they would acknowledge the boredom which their favourite often ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... sensitive and reserved as he was, had nevertheless told her all about his training at Braintree, the boredom of getting up early, the dampness of the tents, and how much he wanted to be sent to the front. She admired his valour, was interested in his music, and at her persuasion he promised to sing her songs ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... as, without reply, she submitted to the banal boredom of this blustering dame's society gabble. Mrs. Gannette hooked her arm into the girl's and led her to a divan. "It's a great affair, isn't it?" she panted, settling her round, unshapely form out over the seat. "Dear me! I did intend to come in costume. Was coming as a tomato. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... out of work in England because luxury was scared by the sudden vista of war, but the black-garbed girl, entrenched in her mahogany bower, was still earning some sort of a livelihood. In a moment, wakened out of her terrible boredom into an alert smile, she had sold to G.J. a bunch of expensive chrysanthemums whose yellow petals were like long curly locks. Thoughtless, he had meant to have the flowers delivered at once to Christine's flat. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... know her," he said, rumpling his hair with an air of boredom. "An old society woman! What's the good of that to me? What have I to do with dowagers? Bow wow dowagers! ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... voice. For the human voice is emotionally expressive through its mere sound alone: one can know a large part of what is going on in the breasts of people who talk in a foreign tongue just by listening to the sound of their voices—their excitement or boredom, their anger, love, or resentment; and one becomes conscious of these emotions, as in hearing music, without knowing what they are all about. All human emotions betray themselves in speech through ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... and was ushered into the precincts. On these occasions the Prime Minister was to be found in a big room upstairs; and he was always walking up and down, like Aristotle only that he had his hands in his pockets. His demeanour would be a blend of boredom with the benign. "Whatch-think of this?" he would demand, snatching up some paper from his desk, cramming it into my hand, and continuing his promenade. Such observations on my part in response to the invitation as seemed to meet ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... no ceremony, had drawn his hat a trifle lower over his eyes and turned his shoulder upon them, continuing along the street in his slouching walk. Elmer, summoning youth's supreme weapon of an affected boredom, yawned, stifled his little cough and went ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Philippe's kingship ended for the day. He had had enough—more than enough—of State and ceremonial, of interviewing ambassadors, and of the flatteries of Princes and the obsequious homage of courtiers. Pleasure called him away from the boredom of empire; and at the stroke of six we find him retiring to the company of his mistresses and his roues to feast and drink and gamble until dawn broke on the revelry—his laugh the loudest, his wit the most dazzling, his stories ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... good reasons for believing that he had found her very trying for some time. He was very elegant and she a learned "white blackbird." He was capricious and she a placid, steady bourgeois woman, very hard-working and very regular in the midst of her irregularity. He used to call her "personified boredom, the dreamer, the silly woman, the nun," when he did not use terms which we cannot transcribe. The climax was when he said to her: "I was mistaken, George, and I beg your pardon, for ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... character, that the story is a triumph of realistic creation. A Modern Instance is not so pleasant a book, but the attention is firmly held by the strong, realistic presentation of the jealousy, the boredom, the temptations, and the dishonesty exhibited in a household of a commonplace, ill-mated pair. Indian Summer begins well, proceeds well, and ends well. It may be a trifle more conventional than the two other novels just mentioned, but it is altogether ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... shame for humanity when I have observed men and women staring through the bars at the splendid African cats in cages, and have also observed that their foolish stare is returned by the lion or tiger with a dull look of infinite boredom. Nor is it pleasant to see small boys pushing sticks through the safe bars, in an endeavour to irritate the royal captives. One remembers Browning's superb lion in The Glove, whom the knight was able to approach in safety, because the regal beast was completely lost in thought—he ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... of Mr. Seven Sachs's hand did him good, reassured him, and gave him courage. He was utterly tired of the voyage, and also of the poetical society of Carlo Trent, whose passage had cost him thirty pounds, considerable boredom, and some sick-nursing during the final days and nights. A dramatic poet with an appetite was a full dose for Edward Henry; but a dramatic poet who lay on his back and moaned for naught but soda-water and dry land amounted to more than Edward Henry ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the colony for liberes, ticket-of-leave men, and outcast Paris; with a sprinkling of gentlemen and officers dying of boredom. No, my friend, we French are not colonists. We emigrate, we do not colonise. This is no colony. We do no ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... did not regard the matter in this light. To her unsophisticated mind Lady Augusta represented nothing more than periodical boredom in the shape of occasional calls, usually made unexpectedly, when the house was at its worst, and nobody was especially tidy,—calls invariably enlivened by severe comments upon the evil propensities of poor relations in general, and the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... cats and dogs? Children, indeed, when left to themselves to take exercise, show impatience, and are prone to quarrel and cry; older children feel it necessary to invent something whereby they may conceal from themselves the intolerable boredom and humiliation of walking for walking's sake, and running for running's sake. They try to find some object for their exertions; the younger children play pranks. The activity of children thus left to themselves has rarely a good result; it does not aid development, save as regards ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... of February (the date of the proposed function) as the second Monday in Lent, seemed to me, too, distinctly appropriate. By attending the performance—IBSEN recommends self-execution—I sentenced myself to three hours and a half of boredom, tempered with disgust. I cannot help feeling that whatever my past may have been, the penance paid to wipe it out was excessive, and therefore rendered it unnecessary that I should attend a second performance announced for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... actually finds mental effort painful, and makes as little of it as possible. And that is the only sort of effort a discarnate individuality can exert. So, unable to endure the fifty or so years needed to make a really good reincarnation, he reincarnates in a year or so, out of pure boredom, into the first vehicle he can find, usually one nobody else wants." Dr. Harnosh dug out the heel of his pipe and blew through the stem. "But nobody will admit his own mental inferiority, even to himself. Now, every machine operator and field hand on the ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... It is by means of the "good story" that the politician makes his way into office; the business man paves the way for a big deal; the after-dinner speaker gets a hearing; the hostess saves her guests from boredom. Such a large place does the "story" hold in our national life that we have invented a social pastime that might be termed a "joke match." "Don't tell a funny story, even if you know one," was the advice ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... a glorious wine-red. There we stood hushed, not daring to move; but holding close the one to the other as the feet of the promenaders waxed and waned above us. Their talk of birds and beasts came in wafts of boredom to us, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the weight of the odd stillness that filled it. The sharpness of sound when it did come, the strangeness of suppressed excitement, the unfamiliar place with Split's quick figure missing, the loneliness of being without her, the boredom of lacking a playmate or a fighting-mate—it all affected Sissy as the prelude of a drama the end of which has something terrifyingly fascinating in it. It must be wonderful to die, thought Sissy, with ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Archibald Wickersham was left standing alone a moment in the middle of the lawn. But Miriam Burrell saw and understood the black rage that shadowed his face. Long before then she had penetrated to the layer of vanity beneath his air of boredom. More than once she had used that knowledge maliciously, to stir him. And she knew how unending could be his hatred for anyone who had ever made him ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the dagger who had killed their man in a fierce brawl or in a dispute over a woman and who formed an aristocracy that disdained the petty thieves, looked upon the bugler as the butt for pranks with which to while away their boredom. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... than the fire-engine could run up Oldcastle Street; and his totals were never wrong. His gesture with a piece of blotting-paper as he blotted off a total was magnificent. He liked long hours; he was thoroughly used to overtime, and his boredom in his lodgings was such that he would often arrive at the office before the appointed hour. He asked thirty shillings a week, and Denry in a mood of generosity gave him thirty-one. He gave Denry his whole ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... certainly appear as one of those spots on our planet where they would least of all wish to find themselves — a God-forsaken, out-of-the-way hole that could offer nothing but the very climax of desolation, discomfort, and boredom. To us nine, who stood on the gangway ready to leave this place, things appeared somewhat differently. That strong little house, that now lay entirely hidden beneath the snow behind Mount Nelson, had for a ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... with reins, or give his servants stinking meat to eat— surely this was reason enough to be indulgent to him? Besides, he was the chief sufferer from his failings, like a sick man from his sores. Instead of being led by boredom and some sort of misunderstanding to look for degeneracy, extinction, heredity, and other such incomprehensible things in each other, would they not do better to stoop a little lower and turn their ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... from his own class. Public Opinion in this case is simply what he thinks. Even if he takes the opinion of strangers—the waiter who serves him at lunch, the tobacconist, the policeman at the corner—the opinion may be one specially prepared for his personal consumption, one inspired by tact, boredom, or even a sense of humour. If, for instance, the process were to be reversed, and my tobacconist were to ask me what I thought of the strike, I should grunt and go out of his shop; but he would be wrong to attribute "a dour grimness" to the nation ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... without any delay a campaign of conquest extremely diverting to observe. To Lanyard it seemed that her methods were crude and obvious enough; but it did something toward mitigating the long-drawn boredom of the cruise to watch them work out, as they seemed to invariably, with entire success; and then remark the insouciance with which, another raw scalp dangling from her belt, Liane would address herself ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... what you see: To mix, and sympathise, and to be free, Is the true sociality. These meet, like marbles mingled in a bag, And the net outcome, friend, is friction, fag, Boredom, and sheer banality. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... modulating his sonorous voice to suit the different characters, and even contriving for a time to impart by his expressive reading a fictitious interest to the dull, tedious tragedy. Gradually, however, the feeling of disappointment and boredom among his audience communicated itself to him. He lost confidence; his beautiful reading began to decline in pathos and interest; and when at last he finished, and, glancing at the downcast faces round him, found that even Laure could not look up at him with a smile of congratulation, he felt ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... towards the English Channel, misgivings began to crowd in upon her. Adventures which would have presented an amusing and enticing aspect to a better-bred woman aroused in Vanessa only the twin sensations of fright and discomfort. Flies bit her, and she was persuaded that it was only sheer boredom that prevented camels from doing the same. Clyde did his best, and a very good best it was, to infuse something of the banquet into their prolonged desert picnics, but even snow-cooled Heidsieck lost its flavour when you were convinced ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... men lounged in at the end of the procession and flopped into their seats with the proper air of insupportable boredom. Scotty's first task was to take the measure of his new instructor. At the first glance he was conscious of a distinct sensation of disappointment. He had expected the stranger to be young and callow, but this man ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... court late, I sat by myself. Of course I could not forget the conversation I had with Brierly, and now I had them both under my eyes. The demeanour of one suggested gloomy impudence and of the other a contemptuous boredom; yet one attitude might not have been truer than the other, and I was aware that one was not true. Brierly was not bored—he was exasperated; and if so, then Jim might not have been impudent. According ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... swam sluggishly along shore, her lofty canvas flapping in the faint air. On her spotless quarter-deck, Rupert Venner, wealthy idler and owner of the vessel, lounged in a deck-chair a picture of the utter finality of boredom. His guests, Craik Tomlin and John Pearse, made perfunctory pretense of admiring the lovely coast scenery along the port hand; but their air was that of men surfeited with sights, tired of the languorous calm, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... open the door of the carriage, and a lady's maid, with a jewel case in her hand, stared at him with undisguised curiosity. The lady bade him goodbye kindly, yet with a note of final dismissal in her tone. He had occupied her time for an hour or two, and saved her from absolute boredom. The matter was ended there. Nevertheless, from a quiet corner of the station he watched her stand listlessly on the platform while her things were being collected—a tall, distinguished looking figure, and very noticeable amongst the motley crowd who were streaming ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... these days, tumbling up and down the companion-way. But Lily preferred to enjoy herself and expended on running about the energies which she no longer had to devote to her practising. Her accumulated weariness disappeared under the influence of the sleep and the good meals, which she had not the boredom of having to get ready, as in Fourteenth Street, where Lily, big girl that she was, had to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... entrance in Daem. It looked rather the same from above as it did from below, though the smells and sounds were missing, and I found that it was rather bland once the initial excitement, surprise, and respect of its novelty had worn off. Indeed, it was quite too dull for me, even in my state of boredom as a prisoner, though I suppose that that isn't a proper description of my feelings, for I wasn't free from excitement or intriguing events, but rather, I was in the middle of a campaign of new and anticipated things, but simply unable ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... a position which would just have suited one of those Indian mystics who sit perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the Infinite; but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse |
