You had to hand it to human beings. They had one of the strangest powers in the universe. Even her grandfather had remarked upon it. No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them the up the evolutionary ladder. (TOT)
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'The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.' (TT)
... Nanny Ogg's was an expression of extreme interest that was nevertheless made up of one hundred percent artificial additives. (CJ)
Experience had taught him never to say things like 'I don't like it, it's too quiet.' There was no such thing as too quiet. (J)
And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world. (SM)
The people of Ankh-Morpork liked novelty. The trouble was that they didn’t like novelty for long. (MP)
The thought that someone could voluntarily give up the prospect of being bored for fifty years made him feel quite weak. With fifty years ahead of him, he thought, he could elevate tedium to the status of an art form. There would be no end to the things he wouldn’t do. (S)
‘Sorry. I don’t know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands at the claws of exotic monsters isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, and couldn’t get the hang of it. Each to their own, that’s what I say, and I was cut out for boredom.’ (S)
She’d tried being alone with her thoughts once, but had never tried it again. It had been too dull. (BOS)
‘A surfeit of wonders will dull the mind.’ (LE)
… he’d thought a wild surmise was some kind of exotic bird. Well, he was now looking out over new worlds with somewhat of a tame surmise. (LE)
... the world was overwhelmingly full of things that were more interesting than cricket. (N)
Nothing happened and went on happening. (N)
Er ... would you accept a wee bitty lie?’ Rob said.
‘No!’ ‘It’s interestin’. There’s dragons an’unicorns in it -’ ‘No. I want the truth!’ ‘Ach, it’s so boring.' (W) AIRPORTS: A place where people hurry up and wait. (Wings)
The land between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops was fertile, well-cultivated, and dull, dull, dull. Travel broadens the mind. This landscape broadened the mind because the mind just flowed out from the ears like porridge. (LL)
... Rincewind had in any case seen his past life flash in front of his eyes so many times that he could sleep through the boring bits ... (LF)
'I wouldn’t do that if I were you, old chap,’ said the Senior Wrangler. ‘You don’t know where it might take you.’
‘Don’t care,’ said the Dean. He still didn’t take his eyes of the thing. ‘I mean, it’s not of this world,’said the Senior Wrangler. ‘I’ve been of this world for more than seventy years,’said the Dean, ‘and it is extremely boring.' (SM) 'There's lots of waiting in warfare,’ said Boy Willie.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Saveloy. ‘I’ve heard people say that. They say there’s long periods of boredom followed by short periods of excitement.’ ‘Not really,’ said Cohen. ‘It’s more like short periods of waiting followed by long periods of being dead'. (IT) He had any amount of ways of passing the time, since guard duty in Lancre involved such an awful lot of it. There was Getting the Nostrils Really Clean,that was a good one. Or Farting Tunes. Or Standing On One Leg. Holding His Breath and Counting was something he fell back on when he couldn’t think of anything else and his meals hadn’t been too rich in carbohydrates. (LL)
There were meetings. There were always meetings. And they were dull, which is part of the reason they were meetings. Dull likes company. (MM)
He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.
It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane. (RM) Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an
interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available. He was puzzled that people seemed to think he was a boring conversationalist. Why, he could talk about all kinds of clocks. Mechanical clocks, magical clocks, sand clocks, cuckoo clocks, the rare Hershebian beetle clocks…But for some reason he always ran out of listeners before he ran out of clocks. (TOT) Now he realised what made boredom so attractive. It was the knowledge that worse things, dangerously exciting things, were going on just around the corner and that you were well out of them. For boredom to be enjoyable there
had to be something to compare it with. (E) 'Are you the owner of this establishment?' asked the fireman.
'Don't be stupid. Do I look like I run a bookshop?' 'I really wuldn't know that, sir. Appearances can be very deceptive. For example, I am a fireman. However, upon meeting me socially, people unaware of my occupation often suppose that I am, in fact, a chartered accountant or company director. Imagine me out of uniform, sir, and what kind of man would you see before you. Honestly?' 'A prat,' said Crowley and he ran into the bookshop. (GO) |
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