Monotonous Quotes

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality. ~ Theodor Adorno

For it was Saturday night, the best and bingiest glad-time of the week, one of the fifty-two holidays in the slow-turning Big Wheel of the year, a violent preamble to a prostrate Sabbath. Piled up passions were exploded on Saturday night, and the effect of a week's monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a burst of goodwill. You followed the motto of 'be drunk and be happy,' kept your crafty arms around female waists, and felt the beer going beneficially down into the elastic capacity of your guts. ~ Alan Sillitoe

The Chains of conformity click in tiresomely monotonous unison. ~ Leonard Sweet

Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life- written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and forseeing to the exact hour the time you would die. How many people do you suppose you have the courage to read it then? Or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope, without surprise? Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so often. But imagine how deadly monotonous it would be if nothing unexpected could happen between meals? ~ Jean Webster

It gets kinda monotonous, but that's television. There are plus sides and down sides. The positive side is that you have steady work for nine months of the year for however many years your show is on TV,. ~ Alexis Bledel

Classicism, a brief, perfectly balanced instant of complete possession of forms; not a slow and monotonous application of 'rules,' but a pure, quick delight, like the acme of the Greeks, so delicate that the pointer of the scale scarcely trembles … ~ Henri Focillon

Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

. . I may actually do what I've pretended many times to have done: use my judo in self-defense. To save my - virginity? My life, she thought. But more likely he is just some poor low-class wop laboring slob with delusions of glory; he wants to go on a grand spree, spend all his money, live it up - and then go back to his monotonous existence. And he needs a girl to do it. ~ Philip K. Dick

So which guideline should a writer follow, "Avoid elegant variation" or "Don't use a word twice on one page"? Traditional style guides don't resolve the contradiction, but psycholinguistics can help. Wording should not be varied capriciously, because in general people assume that if someone uses two different words they're referring to two different things. And as we shall soon see, wording should never be varied when a writer is comparing or contrasting two things. But wording should be varied when an entity is referred to multiple times in quick succession and repeating the name would sound monotonous or would misleadingly suggest that a new actor had entered the scene. ~ Steven Pinker

My hope is that the white and the black will be united in perfect love and fellowship, with complete unity and brotherhood. Associate with each other, think of each other, and be like a rose garden. Anyone who goes into a rose garden will see various roses, white, pink, yellow, red, all growing together and replete with adornment. Each one accentuates the beauty of the other. Were all of one color, the garden would be monotonous to the eye. If they were all white or yellow or red, the garden would lack variety and attractiveness; but when the colors are varied, white, pink, yellow, red, there will be the greatest beauty. ~ Abdu'l- Baha

I may," said Poirot in a completely unconvinced tone, "be wrong."
Morton smiled. "But that doesn't often happen to you?"
"No. Though I will admit - yes, I am forced to admit - that it has happened to me."
"I must say I'm glad to hear it! To be always right must be sometimes monotonous."
"I do not find it so," Poirot assured him. ~ Agatha Christie

I'd like to think that the day I realize we will always be miserable will differ from every other. I hope it will so obnoxiously stand out from the monotonous cycle of my days, that I wouldn't forget that sorrowful moment of comprehension. But, when that breeze of reality comes by, it wont be a memorable hurricane, nor a momentous tornado. It will be the same, sad, soft wind that I felt the day before, and the day before that. Because the moment you understand your inevitable misery in life, may also be the day you see you are to always be dejected. ~ Temperance

The way not to lead a monotonous life is to live for others. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Our winters are very long here, very long and very monotonous. But we don't complain about it downstairs, we're shielded against the winter. Oh, spring does come eventually, and summer, and they last for a while, but now, looking back, spring and summer seem too short, as if they were not much more than a couple of days, and even on those days, no matter how lovely the day, it still snows occasionally. ~ Franz Kafka

The cyclicality of hard alternating with easy plays out not only in the day and the week but also across training cycles and even across years. Think of Olympians who take an easy year or two in their quadrennial cycles. Check that there is variety across your training at every level, from the cooldown after a hard workout to the easier year after a particularly tough season. Active recovery, both in easy workouts and in easy days, introduces variability to training. Remember Carl Foster's finding, outlined in Chapter 4, that athletes can adapt better to a greater overall training stress when it is variable instead of monotonous. Make the easy days really easy so that the hard days can be truly hard. If you can rein in your effort on your easy days, you'll have room to push a little faster or a little longer on your hard days, yielding a much bigger fitness reward than simply muddling through with easy days that are too hard and hard days that therefore become too slow or short. ~ Rountree Sage

People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them any more. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had. ~ Michael Ende

F-word. It substituted for adjectives, nouns, and verbs. It was used, for example, to describe the cooks: "those f - ers," or "f - ing cooks"; what they did: "f - ed it up again"; and what they produced. David Kenyon Webster, a Harvard English major, confessed that he found it difficult to adjust to the "vile, monotonous, and unimaginative language." The language made these boys turning into men feel tough and, more important, insiders, members of a group. Even Webster got used to it, although never to like it. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

In their castle beyond night
Gather the Gods in Darkness,
With darkness to pattern man's fate.

The colors of darkness are no monotonous hue -
For the blackness of Evil knows various shades,
Full many as Evil has names.

Vengeance and Madness, inseparable twins,
Born together and worshipped as one;
Nor can the Gods tell one from his brother.

In their castle beyond night
Gather the Gods in Darkness
And darkness weaves with many shades. ~ Karl Edward Wagner

The human race is a monotonous thing. Most people work most of the time in order to live, and the little freedom they have left over frightens them so, that they will do anything to get rid of it. Oh, the regimentation of mankind! ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Stigma refers to a set of negative associations of a person with something shameful, disgraceful and repulsive ~ Sunday Adelaja

Romantic behavior was basically monotonous and predictable, and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people. ~ John Green

Don't ya'll have anything better to do than to mess with Myles?" she asked. "Sadly, Mom, they don't," Myles said. It's the only respite they have from their monotonous, inconsequential tedium of an existence." Amir's eyes widened. "Duck, Pop! He's gonna big word us to death." Amir lifted his forearm. "Thesaurus-shields up! ~ Marcus Major

The endless procession of people and things that forms the world is for me an interminable gallery of pictures whose content bores me. It doesn't interest me because the soul is a monotonous thing and is always the same in everyone; it differs only in its personal manifestations and the best part of it is that which overflows into dreams, into mannerisms and gestures, and thus becomes part of the image that so captures my interest [ ... ] This is how I experience the animate exteriors of things and beings, in pure vision, indifferent as a god from another world to their content, to their spirit. I only go deep into the surface of other people, if I want profundity I look for it in myself and in my concept of things. ~ Fernando Pessoa

If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and character, it is less the fault of the art than that of the artist. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

London, with its monotonous and melancholy houses, seems like an inharmonious patchwork, as if pieced together without design. Yet it is lovable in its sprawling confusion. ~ Joseph Fort Newton

Walking is so monotonous. Left, right, left, right, it's also all so political. ~ Jarod Kintz

Many novice writers try to avoid using 'said' by substituting synonyms: 'he uttered,' 'she murmured,' 'he questioned.' It's true that any word repeated too often becomes monotonous, but substitutions for 'said' can be worse than its repetition. ~ Nancy Kress

Though the mules plod in a steady and unflagging hypnosis, the vehicle does not seem to progress. It seems to hang suspended in the middle distance forever and forever, so infinitesimal is its progress, like a shabby bead upon the mild red string of road. So much so is this that in the watching of it the eye loses it as sight and sense drowsily merge and blend, like the road itself, with all the peaceful and monotonous changes between darkness and day, like already measured thread being rewound onto a spool. So that at last, as though out of some trivial and unimportant region beyond even distance, the sound of it seems to come slow and terrific and without meaning, as though it were a ghost traveling a half mile ahead of its own shape. ~ William Faulkner

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Hundreds of versts of desolate, monotonous, sun-parched steppe cannot bring on the depression induced by one man who sits and talks, and gives no sign of ever going. ~ Anton Chekhov

It was not only Odette's indifference, however, that he must take pains to circumvent; it was also, not infrequently, his own; feeling that, since Odette had had every facility for seeing him, she seemed no longer to have very much to say to him when they did meet, he was afraid lest the manner - at once trivial, monotonous, and seemingly unalterable - which she now adopted when they were together should ultimately destroy in him that romantic hope, that a day might come when she would make avowal of her passion, by which hope alone he had become and would remain her lover. ~ Marcel Proust

Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision? ~ Frank Herbert

No, no
no pity, please," said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. "It's a very good thing, really. I'll be seeing lots of new things, a lot of new creatures." He tried to smile. "One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System." He laughed harshly. "After all," he said, "it isn't as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was." He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn't known was on his eyelid. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

To all those who lead monotonous lives in the hope that they may experience at second hand the delights and dangers of adventure.
[author's dedication] ~ Agatha Christie

Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself. ~ Simone Weil

As the nurses busied themselves with other patients and statistics, Livia slid her hand over his. She needed to feel his skin. She tucked his hand under the thin blanket and held it without protection. The same tingling she'd felt when they first held hands flooded her skin. He's still in there. They can tell me anything they want. Blake's right here.
She scooted her chair closer to his head. The deep, monotonous breaths the ventilator forced him to take sounded scary, but Livia held tight to his hand.
"I love you, Blake Hartt," she whispered. "I'll love you forever. ~ Debra Anastasia

Life would be pretty monotonous if the sky was always blue. ~ Robin Lee Graham

So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil. Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, welling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life. ~ E. M. Forster

I played a few rough versions of songs while Chad sat by, looking lost. Mia came in wearing black leather pants and a tight sweater. As I strummed the Gibson, she made her way over to the piano. She smiled and threw her hand up, waving to Chad. He smiled back and then I watched him study her as she passed. Then his dipshit, googly eyes dropped to her ass while she moved the piano bench out.

When he looked back at me, I glared at him and began strumming a dreary and much louder tune. His body sank into his chair and he dropped his head down to stare at his fidgeting hands. Mia began playing a sullen little melody in an attempt to accompany the monotonous song I was forming, and then she stopped abruptly and turned toward me.

I continued playing.

"Is this going to be a ballad?" she asked.

Without taking my eyes off of dipshit, I said, "No, baby, this is what's called a funeral march."

Chad threw his arms up and said, "I get it. I get it. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Mia asked.

"Nothing!" Chad and I both shouted.

"Let's move on," I said, arching one eyebrow at him.

Chad kept his eyes trained on either the ground or me through the rest of the session ~ Renee Carlino

To be angry once in a while is really good fun, because it makes others so miserable. But to be angry morning, noon and night, as I am, grows monotonous and prevents my gaining any other pleasure in life. ~ L. Frank Baum

This was the time of the day when i most wished i were able to sleep. High school.
Or was purgatory the right word? If there were any way to atone for my
sins, this ought to count toward the tally in some measure. The tedium was
not something I grew used to; every day seemed more impossibly
monotonous than the last.
Perhaps this could even be considered my form of sleep - if sleep was
defined as the inert state between active periods. ~ Stephenie Meyer

In a monocultural society, people deprive themselves of wise methods and principles that they could have learned from others ~ Sunday Adelaja

The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in search of a shady crevice. Cattle and dogs cringed under the scanty shade of the trees and waited for the rain to deliver them from the heat and thirst. Instead the heat grew more intense and oppressive each day, singeing and stifling all living things with an invisible sheet of fire, which only the rain could put out.

The drought had persisted for over a month. ~ S. Rajaratnam

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one! ~ Brian Eno

*I treat my poor heart like a sick child, and gratify its every fancy
* The human race is but a monotonous affair
*and O Wilhelm, I vowed at that moment, that a maiden whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, never, never should waltz with any one else but with me, if I went to perdition for it! - you will understand this.
*I felt as though a dagger went through my heart.
* I gazed upon her rich dark eyes during these remarks, how my very soul gloated over her warm lips and fresh, glowing cheeks, how I became quite lost in the delightful meaning of her words, so much so, that I scarcely heard the actual expressions
*"As long as I see those eyes open, there is no fear of my falling asleep."
* I left her asking permission to visit her in the course of the day. She consented, and I went, and, since that time, sun, moon, and stars may pursue their course: I know not whether it is day or night; the whole world is nothing to me.
*We should deal with children as God deals with us, we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ... "
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I watch the springs, the summers, the autumns; And when comes the winter snow monotonous, I shut all the doors and shutters To build in the night my fairy palace. ~ Charles Baudelaire

You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Sunshine - sunshine! tedious, changeless, monotonous. Not that discreet English Sunshine which varies its charm with clouds, with rainbows, with golden mist... here the sun has ceased trying to please so venerable a world. ~ Gertrude Bell

It was the most monotonous day of my life," he replied without a second's hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and re-formed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. "As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent," he said. This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. "Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I'll die here." And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb. ~ John Le Carre

Dead men by mass production––in one country after another––month after month and year after year. Dead men in winter and dead men in summer. Dead men in such familiar promiscuity that they become monotonous. Dead men in such monstrous infinity that you come almost to hate them. These are the things that you at home need not even try to understand. ~ Ernie Pyle

The writing in mathematics text is not only laconic to a fault; it is cold, monotonous, dry, dull, and even ungrammatical ... The books are not only printed by machines; they are written by machines. ~ Morris Kline

A funny thing happens when you have nothing left to live for. Your existence loses all its sharp edges. There are no more steep drops, no hills to climb. Colors blur and muddle together until your surroundings are a bunch of meaningless shapes and figures painted in the same shade of gray. There's nothing that could possibly surprise you or resurrect those old sensations of joy or fear. No humans could be as unfeeling, as numb, as you are. And then, just when you're getting lulled into the monotonous routine, something snaps. No more. ~ Alexandra Monir

To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions? ~ Criss Jami

The routines of tourism are even more monotonous than those of daily life. ~ Mason Cooley

When life is sweet, be thankful and rejoice.
When life is bitter, be strong and persevere.
When life is confusing, be calm and inquire.
When life is perplexing, be humble and learn.

When life is unfair, be firm and endure.
When life is turbulent, be optimistic and adapt.
When life is difficult, be determined and focus.
When life is prosperous, be wise and generous.

When life is good, be grateful and merry.
When life is exciting, be cautious and thankful.
When life is monotonous, be content and cheerful.
When life is life, be prudent and enjoy. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Life coaching is a way of life, not just another monotonous job that eventually saps one's energy. It's a profession that makes people feel like they have a lot to contribute to the world they're living in. A greater understanding of the concept is needed in order to apply it, though. ~ James Browning

I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every Amer ~ Jon Krakauer

And morally, maybe, if there's such a thing as moral exhaustion. There is such a thing, he decides. You start by being idealistic, morally strong if you will, but then the rock of your moral strength is eroded, bit by bit, until you're, well, exhausted, and you do things that you never thought you would. Or you do things that you always feared you would. Or something like that. You'd think that there would be a breaking point - a decisive moment - but there is no single moment or event that you can put your finger on. No, it's not that dramatic - it's the dull, monotonous process of erosion. Maybe ~ Don Winslow

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Those are the most monotonous fuckin' crickets I ever heard in my life. ~ Sam Shepard

But I write badly. The part of my brain in charge of writing ability refuses to work. My memory has weakened, my thoughts lack consistency, and each time I set them down on paper it seems to me that I've lost the intuition of their organic connection, the constructions are monotonous, the phrasing impoverished and timid. I often write something other than what I mean; when I get to the end, I no longer remember the beginning. I often forget ordinary words, and always have to waste much energy avoiding superfluous phrases and unnecessary parenthetical clauses in my writing–both clearly witnessing to a decline of mental activity. And, remarkably, the simpler the writing, the more excruciating is the strain. ~ Anton Chekhov

Where life is colorful and varied, religion can be austere or unimportant. Where life is appallingly monotonous, religion must be emotional, dramatic and intense. Without the curry, boiled rice can be very dull. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

How wicked I was to wish that something dramatic would happen!' she thought. 'Oh, if we could only have those dear, monotonous, pleasant days back again! I would *never* grumble about them again. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Hatred of different people supersedes logic and obvious facts and truth ~ Sunday Adelaja

Perhaps boredom was an irrelevant concept for a life as monotonous as hers. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education. ~ Bob Black

He sang "I wish I weren't me" over and over again just flat of the key of love until he forgot the words and could only hum along. Everyday was the same. The same stupid smile on the same stupid boy. Until the days blurred into a haze and the boy dropped into a depression. Not a cool dark room and cigarette depression like the songs he loved, but one that felt like he was being smothered by a safe, suburban, monotonous blanket. Everything felt like a headache to the boy. Every face, every stupid stuttered sentence all wrapped up into the biggest headache ever. So the boy took an aspirin. And another and another and then went to sleep, lullabyed by hopes he would never wake up to. ~ Pete Wentz

My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.' ~ Ravi Shankar

The lawyer must either learn to live more capaciously or be content to find himself continuously less trusted, more circumscribed, till he becomes hardly more important than a minor administrator, confined to a monotonous round of record and routine, without dignity, inspiration, or respect. ~ Learned Hand

Training can be monotonous, and it is hard work, but you never lose sight of why you are doing it. Every single effort of every single session counts in the months and years leading up to a big event. ~ Chris Hoy

Now, all quiet, all rusty, wind and rain in possession, lamps extinguished, Mugby Junction dead and indistinct, with its robe drawn over its head, like Caesar. Now, too, as the belated traveller plodded up and down, a shadowy train went by him in the gloom which was no other than the train of a life. From whatsoever intangible deep cutting or dark tunnel it emerged, here it came, unsummoned and unannounced, stealing upon him and passing away into obscurity. Here, mournfully went by, a child who had never had a childhood or known a parent, inseparable from a youth with a bitter sense of his namelessness, coupled to a man the enforced business of whose best years had been distasteful and oppressive, linked to an ungrateful friend, dragging after him a woman once beloved. Attendant, with many a clank and wrench, were lumbering cares, dark meditations, huge dim disappointments, monotonous years, a long jarring line of the discords of a solitary and unhappy existence. ~ Charles Dickens

I read the Bible steadily ... Even the long, monotonous lists. Even the really weird stuff, most of it so unbelievable as to only be true. I have to say I found it the most compelling piece of creative non-fiction I had ever read. If I sat around for thousands of years, I could never come up with what it proposes, let alone with how intricately Genesis unfolds toward Revelation. ~ Carolyn Weber

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance. ~ Agnes Repplier

For it is not inertia alone
that is responsible for human relationships repeating
themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and
unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new,unforeseeable
experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.
But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes
nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation
to another as something alive. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

This monotonous world around
Seems boring, colorless, and dull.
I just existed till I found
You in my life which was banal. ~ Tatyana K. Varenko

The more routine that systematised activities are, the more nearly they are of the monotonous character seen in the habits of social animals and the less necessary are master builders; the more novel actions are, the more necessary are master builders. Dislike of the leader and the promoter, though linked emotionally to progressivism, is linked logically to total conservatism. Conversely, an authoritarian approach, natural enough in the instigator of new activities, is unjustified in the mere overseer of routines. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

A rogue who has been condemned to death by the
tribunal says he wants to resist oppression simply because he wants to resist the scaffold!" Saint-Just's
indignation is hard to understand in that, until his time, the scaffold was precisely nothing else but one of
the most obvious symbols of oppression. But at the heart of this logical delirium, at the logical conclusion
of this morality of virtue, the scaffold represents freedom. It assures rational unity, and harmony in the
ideal city. It purifies (the word is apt) the Republic and eliminates malpractices that arise to contradict the
general will and universal reason. "They question my right to the title of philanthropist," Marat exclaims,
in quite a different style. "Ah, what injustice! Who cannot see that I want to cut off a few heads to save a
great number?" A few - a faction? Naturally - and all historic actions are performed at this price. But
Marat, making his final calculations, claimed two hundred and seventy-three thousand heads. But he
compromised the therapeutic aspect of the operation by screaming during the massacre: "Brand them with
hot irons, cut off their thumbs, tear out their tongues." This philanthropist wrote day and night, in the
most monotonous vocabulary imaginable, of the necessity of killing in order to create. He wrote again, by
candlelight deep down in his cellar, during the September nights while his henchmen were installing
spec ~ Albert Camus

Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox. "My life is very monotonous. I run after the chickens; the men run after me. All the chickens are the same; all the men are the same. Consequently, I get a little bored. But if you tame me, my days will be as if filled with sunlight. I shall know the sound of a footstep different from all the rest ... You see the fields of corn? Well, I don't eat bread. Corn is of no use to me. Corn fields remind me of nothing. Which is sad. On the other hand, your hair is the colour of gold. So think how wonderful it will be when you have tamed me. The corn, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I will come to love the sound of the wind in the field of corn.
The fox fell silent and looked steadily at the little prince for a long time.
"Please," he said, "tame me! ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Written language must be considered as a particular psychic reality. The book is permanent; it is an object in your field of vision. It speaks to you with a monotonous authority which even its author would not have. You are fairly obliged to read what is written. ~ Gaston Bachelard

She had cool green eyes and jet hair, a quick smile, and was the type of girl Jem fell for with monotonous regularity. ~ Harper Lee

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere. ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere." The human race is but a monotonous affair. Most of them labour the greater part of their time for mere subsistence; and the scanty portion of freedom which remains to them so troubles them that they use every exertion to get rid of it. Oh, the destiny of man! ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas
stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety. ~ Aleister Crowley

Stigmatization refers to the association of negative quality with all representatives of a certain group of people, although this relationship is absent or not proven ~ Sunday Adelaja

Purposeless life will definitely be gray, monotonous, ordinary and frustrating ~ Sunday Adelaja

Egypt is a fertile valley of rich river soil, low-lying, warm, monotonous, a slow-flowing river, and beyond the limitless desert. Greece is a country of sparse fertility and keen, cold winters, all hills and mountains sharp cut in stone, where strong men must work hard to get their bread. And while Egypt submitted and suffered and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full-face to life. For somewhere among those steep stone mountains, in little sheltered valleys where the great hills were ramparts to defend, and men could have security for peace and happy living, something quite new came into the world: the joy of life found expression. Perhaps it was born there, among the shepherds pasturing their flocks where the wild flowers made a glory on the hillside; among the sailors on a sapphire sea washing enchanted islands purple in a luminous air. ~ Edith Hamilton

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

To a person sitting quietly at home, Rocky Mountain traveling, like Rocky Mountain scenery, must seem very monotonous; but not so to me, to whom the pure, dry mountain air is the elixir of life. ~ Isabella Bird

Our lives were absolutely monotonous and uneventful. Nothing nice ever happened, except ice-cream on Sundays, and even that was regular. In all the eighteen years I was there I only had one adventure - when the woodshed burned. We had to get up in the night and dress so as to be ready in case the house should catch. But it didn't catch and we went back to bed.
Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human craving. But I never had one until Mrs. Lippett called me to the office to tell me that Mr. John Smith was going to send me to college. And then she broke the news so gradually that it just barely shocked me. ~ Jean Webster

I've never been a suicidal person. I've never been someone to want to see the world come to an end. But I would like to see something different than what I'm seeing. Because it is becoming a monotonous - as if you're watching re-runs of things you've already seen. ~ Marilyn Manson

Changeable women are more endurable that monotonous ones; they are sometimes murdered but never deserted. ~ George Bernard Shaw

He said that academia reminded him of a badly run circus. The faculty members were like underfed animals
weary of their cages, which were never large enough to begin with
and they responded sluggishly to the whip. The trapeze artists fell with monotonous regularity into poorly strung nets. The clowns looked hungry. The tent leaked. The crowd was inattentive, shouting incoherently at inappropriate moments. And when the show was over, no one cheered. ~ Susan Hubbard

The youngsters coming up now just go through the motions necessary to make the play. They should bounce around a little, show some life and zip. It adds a little action and gives the fans something to look at rather than the monotonous routine, no matter how perfectly the play is made. ~ Al Lopez

Going to the trial was very tiring for me, but I did enjoy it better than sitting in a jail cell. That could be very monotonous. ~ Richard Ramirez

One of the truest tests of spiritual maturity is seeing the miraculous in the monotonous. ~ Mark Batterson

To discover a metaphysical relationship between Quality and the Buddha at some mountaintop of personal experience is very spectacular. And very unimportant. If that were all this Chautauqua was about I should be dismissed. What's important is the relevance of such a discovery to all the valleys of this world, and all the dull, dreary jobs and monotonous years that await all of us in them. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

With unsteady hands, Phillip yanked on the mare's bridle straps while trying to loosen one of the stubborn buckles. She snorted at his rough handling.
Totka appeared beside him. "Let me."
Phillip gratefully released the task, an unexpected sense of brotherhood filling him. If anyone knew the heartache of separation, it was the man whose deft brown hands readied Phillip's mount for the long road ahead.
Totka's own road had been lengthy. And yet, after two years, he somehow managed to continue to place one foot in front of the other. His breath still entered and left his body in the same monotonous pattern. How? When already several times over the half-day since Grayson had ridden out with Milly, Phillip had wondered if his chest might explode with the effort of expanding and contracting without her. ~ April W. Gardner