I’ve been collecting the best boredom quotes for the last couple of years. And now, here are 67 of them just for you. The goal? To inspire you and make you realize that after all, boredom may not be so bad… Enjoy!
Boredom: the desire for desires. Leo Tolstoy
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is. Thomas Szasz
Boredom comes from thinking this moment isn’t enough. James Pierce
When I get everything I want, I will die of boredom. Paulo Coelho (Source)
Never be bored, and you will never be boring. Eleanor Roosevelt
Boredom is an insult to life. Paulo Coelho (Source)
You can’t waste time, only yourself. Shane Parrish
He is really wise who is nettled at nothing. François de La Rochefoucauld
Boredom is a type of ingratitude. Daily Zen (Source)
Only the boring are bored. Joshua Fields Millburn
Doing boring things without getting bored is a competitive advantage. Shane Parrish (Source)
The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom. Arthur Schopenhauer
All solutions of boredom, become boredom. Kunal Shah (Source)
A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness. Albert Einstein
Bored people expect. Wise people accept. Maxime Lagacé
Related
- 100 Loneliness Quotes To Comfort And Inspire You
- 79 Unhappy Quotes To Help You Stop Feeling Miserable
- 79 Optimism Quotes To Improve Your Mood (With Images)
Smartphones removed boredom at the cost of peace of mind. Unknown
There’s no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes, Crazy, yes. But there’s no excuse for boredom, ever. Viggo Mortensen
I would rather die of passion than of boredom. Vincent Van Gogh
Boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement. James Clear (Atomic Habits, Amazon book)
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom. Anatole France
We try and make every good experience repeatable, and then run away from the resulting boredom. Naval Ravikant
The more you run from boredom, the more it follows you. James Pierce
Being bored is more useful than being busy. Maxime Lagacé
Normalize doing nothing and being fine with it. Maxime Lagacé
Entertainment becomes boring if not constrained. Angela Jiang
Order without diversity can result in monotony and boredom; diversity without order can produce chaos. Francis D.K. Ching
Do not get bored with the process. Erik Spoelstra
I can stand defeats, pain, anger. But I can’t stand boredom. Paulo Coelho (Source)
Boredom and insecurity may have brought you into the cave but you don’t have to stay. Thema Bryant-Davis
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men… of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as though they were cut flowers in a vase. Bertrand Russell
Man finds nothing so intolerable as to be in a state of complete rest, without passions, without occupation, without diversion, without effort. Blaise Pascal
Believe you’re at the right place at the right time and you won’t be bored. Maxime Lagacé
Boredom is a filter. Common ideas come before it. Uncommon ideas come after it. Sit with a project long enough to get bored with it, then sit a little more. The most useful insights bubble up after you get bored. James Clear (Source)
Top performers in any craft figure out a way to fall in love with boredom, put in their reps, and do the work. James Clear
Boredom is the inevitable consequence of a life devoted to pleasure. Kapil Gupta (Source)
I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. Søren Kierkegaard
Happiness is loving the boring days. Thibaut
Boredom leads to one of these two things: more boredom or more creativity. Matthew Kobach
You waste years by not being able to waste hours. Amos Tversky
Doing drugs is just a war with boredom. Mac Miller
Almost always we are bored by people to whom we ourselves are boring. François de La Rochefoucauld
We often boast that we are never bored, but yet we are so conceited that we do not perceive how often we bore others. François de La Rochefoucauld
Boredom is a defense mechanism to avoid having to sit alone with our unaddressed thoughts. Naval Ravikant
I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Richard Feynman
Boredom is a privilege. Cherish it while it lasts instead of trying to fix it. Preethi Kasireddy (Source)
Smartphones are boredom killers. Smartphones create boring people. Unknown
When you pay attention to boredom it gets unbelievably interesting. Jon Kabat-Zinn
You are not bored, you are boring. Brian Norgard
Dullness doesn’t sell ads, so the media manufactures a continuous stream of outrage to fill the void. Elaine Ou
The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from. Lynda Barry
You’ll do better work if you’re bored rather than busy. Naval Ravikant (Source)
There is no observable difference between peace and boredom – only your mindset. Angela Jiang
Boredom is just lack of attention. Sven Schnieders
Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. Arthur Schopenhauer
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom. Arthur Schopenhauer
Decrease dopamine dependency. Bring back boredom. Anthony Pompliano (Source)
Boredom ought to be one of the seven deadly sins. It deserves the honor. Frederick Buechner
Loneliness is cured by contact with yourself. Sven Schnieders
Do you know that in a universe so full of wonders they have managed to invent boredom. Terry Pratchett
Against boredom even gods struggle in vain. Friedrich Nietzsche
You can’t be bored when you remember how precious life is. Maxime Lagacé
Boring progress compounds into exceptional results. Shane Parrish
Monotony has nothing to do with a place; monotony, either in its sensation or its infliction, is simply the quality of a person. There are no dreary sights; there are only dreary sight seers. G.K. Chesterton (Alarms and Discursions, Amazon book)
It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as the novelist who is over certain of his plot. Paul Theroux
I know enough of the world now to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything. Charles Dickens
I feel monotony and death to be almost the same. Charlotte Bronte
Greatness is consistency. Meditating once is common. Meditating daily is rare. Exercising today is simple. Training every week is simply remarkable. Writing one essay doesn’t mean much. Writing every day practically makes you a hero. Unheroic days can make for heroic decades. James Clear (Source)
The greatest threat to success is not failure, but boredom. James Clear
Conclusion
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. Ellen Parr
A few thoughts on boredom…
Most of us can’t deal with boredom.
Thus, we take our smartphones and get “busy”, scrolling infinitely and doing nothing important.
We simply seek our quick dopamine fixes.
At least, this is what I observe in people around me, here in Canada.
BUT,
our brain didn’t evolve to be connected 24/7 to news and drama.
Thus, we become stressed and overwhelmed.
In a sense, we forgot how to be bored the right way.
We forgot how it feels to think, wander, create, or simply do nothing.
We forgot how to slow down, how to feel, how to simply be and enjoy being, without anything else.
We learned how to be connected to our smartphones, but we forgot to stay connected with ourselves.
Do you feel the same way?
Related: How to Reconnect to Yourself (psychcentral.com)
Further Readings
- Topic: Sadness
- 73 Sad Quotes To Bring Relief
- 130 Depression Quotes To Bring Support And Relief
- 87 Addiction And Social Media Addiction Quotes
- How to Fall in Love With Boredom and Unlock Your Mental Toughness (jamesclear.com)
- The Art of Being Bored: How to Be More Productive By Doing Nothing (zapier.com)
- 75 Patience Quotes To Make You More Tenacious (And Calm)
- 79 Positive Quotes To Uplift Yourself
- How To Improve Your Mental Health
I hope you enjoyed these surprising boredom quotes.
I also hope you discovered that boredom can, in fact, be beneficial to your mental health, productivity, and creativity.
Now,
if you liked the quotes, please share them with a bored friend today!
Are you easily bored? What’s your favorite boredom quote? And remember: words can transform your life, if you find the right ones.