"Ennui" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infallibly to their categories. Witnessing the rate at which he did intellectual execution on the general spectacle of European life, Rowland at moments felt vaguely uneasy for the future; the boy was living too fast, he would have said, and giving alarming pledges to ennui in his later years. But we must live as our pulses are timed, and Roderick's struck the hour very often. He was, by imagination, though he never became in manner, a natural man of the world; he had intuitively, as an artist, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... I replied that I would obey him, and to tell the truth, I was not ill pleased at the thought of the change. My life with M. de Chalusse was a monotonous and cheerless one. I was almost dying of ennui, for I had been accustomed to work, bustle, and confusion with the Greloux, and I felt delighted at the prospect of finding myself among companions ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... pictures of manners are true, but not sufficiently elevated above the range of every-day life; he has exhausted the surface of life; and as there is little progression in his dramas, and every thing turns usually on the same point, this adds to the impression of shallowness and ennui, as characteristic of the existing state of society. Willingly would he have abolished masks altogether, but he could hardly have compensated for them out of his own resources; however, he retained only a few of them, as Harlequin, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... to Hen, Jessie," Mr. Sherwood said decisively. "But a lumber camp is no place for you. Let's see, his mail address is Hobart Forks, isn't it? Right in the heart of the woods. If you weren't eaten up by black gnats, you would be by ennui," and ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... in the East, and feel that I have had quite enough of it for the present. Notwithstanding the azure skies, bubbling fountains, Mosaic pavements, and fragrant narghiles, I begin to feel symptoms of ennui, and a thirst for European life, sharp air, and a good appetite, a blazing fire, well-lighted rooms, female society, good music, and the piquant vaudevilles of my ancient friends, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Sundays, seems sadly to miss his accustomed daily round of weary labor; the retired tallow-chandler, whose story has pointed so many morals and adorned so many tales, would have died of inertia and ennui in less than six months after his retirement from business, had not his successor kindly allowed him to help on melting-days; and methinks the very ghosts of certain busy and energetic men must fret and fume at the idle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of a great English family, the first place in the world for completing the education of a macaw of genius, is a convent. Its idleness and ennui render a monkey, or a parrot, a valuable resource; and between what I picked up, and what I was taught by the monks of the Propaganda, my acquirements soon became stupendous. Always following my kind master from the refectory to the church, assisting at mess or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... every-day life had so many adventures, I do not understand how any one can complain of ennui. Through what varied scenes I have ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... The ennui of unused powers and corroding heart-hunger had made the Princess old before her time. Scheffer's fight with adversity had long before ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... Cependant je suis convaincu qu'elle en auroit d'avantage encore s'il ne se fut point permis, pour les differens morceaux qu'il y a fait entrer, une traduction trop libre, et surtout s'il s'y fut interdit de nombreux retranchemens qui a la verite nous epargnent l'ennui de certains details peu faits pour plaire, mais qui aussi nous privent de l'inestimable avantage d'apprecier l'auteur et son siecle. Lui-meme, dans la notice preliminaire d'un des voyages qu'il a imprimes, il dit l'avoir tire d'un Latin ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... toward the horizon, accompanied by the stars, as if the heavens were revolving in a direction opposed to our line of travel. We smoked and talked and ate and slept in the old way, while the marvelous mouths in the wall resumed their strange deglutition. Thus the time passed, without ennui, until, unexpectedly, a new phenomenon ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... change To wander through the meadows still, The cool dark oaken grove to range, To listen to the rippling rill. But on the third of grove and mead He took no more the slightest heed; They made him feel inclined to doze; And the conviction soon arose, Ennui can in the country dwell Though without palaces and streets, Cards, balls, routs, poetry or fetes; On him spleen mounted sentinel And like his shadow dogged his life, Or ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... one way I had my revenge: I carried my loaded rifle between my knees, and a pistol in my belt. The dismay, the terror, the panic, the protestations, the entreaties and execrations of all the five, kept us at least from ENNUI for many a weary mile. I doubt whether the two priests ever thumbed their breviaries so devoutly in their lives. Perhaps that brought us salvation. We reached Vera Cruz without adventure, and in the autumn of '51 Fred and I landed safely ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... air and jaded; Sabbath hours have lost their zest; Utter ennui has invaded Every corner of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... characterized by a deep seriousness; no one felt more deeply the spiritual unrest and distraction of his age. More than one poem is an expression of its mental and spiritual sickness, its doubt, ennui, and melancholy. Yet beside such poems as Dover Beach and Stagirius should be placed the lines ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... goin' to see M. Beaucaire's master," said Beaucaire to Lady Mary. "'Tis true what I say, the other night. I cross from Prance in his suite; my passport say as his barber. Then to pass the ennui of exile, I come to Bath and play for what one will. It kill the time. But when the people hear I have been a servant they come only secretly; and there is one of them—he has absolve' me of a promise not to speak—of him I learn ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... his shop and his stock to his head man, set up his coach, and resolved to live like a gentleman; but, in less than a month, the man, used to business, found, that living like a gentleman was dying of ennui; upon which he bought his shop and stock, resumed his trade, and lived very happily, after he had ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... de Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, was dictated by her to Anna's governess, Mlle. Henriette Borel. So she started lightly on the road which was to lead her, the leisured and elegant great lady suffering only from ennui, to the period of her life during which she would toil hour after hour at writing, would be overwhelmed by business, pestered by duns and creditors, overworked, overburdened, and over-worried. She was certainly not very fortunate, for she seems never to have experienced the passionate ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... serenely fair to see; The book of birds and spirits free, God's poem, worth much more than mine, Where flowers for perfect stanzas shine— Flowers that a child may pluck in play, No harsh voice frightening it away. And I'm alone—all pleasure o'er— Alone with pedant called "Ennui," For since the morning at my door Ennui has waited patiently. That docto-r-London born, you mark, One Sunday in December dark, Poor little ones—he loved you not, And waited till the chance he got To enter ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... sante de Madame Austin, tout accident peut etre grave; mais je crois que vous pouvez etre sans inquietude sur les consequences de celui-ci. Mon medecin est un homme habile qui soignera tres bien votre tante, et mes filles lui epargneront un mal tres penible, l'ennui de l'immobilite. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... work temporarily is not the only way to meet a plateau, and fatigue or ennui is probably not the sole or most compelling explanation. It may be that we should not regard the objective results as the true measure of learning; perhaps learning is going on even though the results are not apparent. We discovered something ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... considering whether it be the best; and if many obtrude themselves at once, I write you, as at present, of—nothing. Indeed, my dear Theodosia, I have many, many moments of solicitude about you. Remember that occupation will infallibly expel the fiend ennui, and that solitude is the bug-bear of fools. God bless ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... are either at the club or soundly asleep at home. It is not nice to go around alone, and it is pathetic to go in pairs, with no man. We will go with our daughters and their young friends, for they have cavaliers enough and to spare. Let us get out and see the world, lest we die of ennui and neglect!" It is the chaperone who really goes with the young man. She takes the girl ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... note of pride in his voice and looked up to meet a pair of brilliant black eyes looking at me with an appraising approval that grated. He was a tall, good looking chap, with an air of ennui that sat oddly on his powerful frame. I felt sure that I would like Lillian Gale's husband as little as ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... pray all night without robbing the day of its due meed of cheerfulness, can rise superior to frailties and weaknesses without despising those who cannot, can be serious without being testy and morose, can live for years in a cell or a desert or a convent-close without perishing of ennui or being devoured by restlessness, and can mingle with life, where all its currents meet, without losing their heads or swerving a hairbreadth from the straight line of a most uncommon and most impressive kind of ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... it was the work of a citizen and published in the county paper, brought it instantly into popularity. For many months Calaveras had languished for a sensation; since the last vigilance committee nothing had transpired to dispel the listless ennui begotten of stagnant business and growing civilization. In more prosperous moments the office of the "Record" would have been simply gutted and the editor deported; at present the paper was in such demand ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... rule, yes. I have been fifteen years at St. Peter's awaiting that day when through pure ennui the examiners will pass me. It will be a sad wrench to leave the dear old home." He continued, a tinge of melancholy in his voice: "You know, I am the last of the old brigade. The medical student no longer riots. His name is no longer a byword; ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... on another occasion, "I hope you are not dying of ennui, etc. Over here things are going so-so. He asked me yesterday to go with him to the Louvre, and we walked about among the pictures for half an hour. Mamma thinks it a very strange sort of thing for me to be doing, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... invisible wings, which seemed to scatter an irresistible enchantment. He became bored at the long hours in the bright sun, yawned in his wicker chair, smoking pipe after pipe, not knowing what to talk about. Josephina, on her part, tried to drive away the ennui by reading some English novel of aristocratic life, tiresome and moral, to which she had taken a great liking ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to hear one's opinion doubted, one's skill questioned, was the tyro's portion; he was too old to treat such insolence with the scorn it deserved. Of course he had lived the affair down; but the result of it would seem to be a bottomless ENNUI, a TEDIUM VITAE that had something pathological about it. Under its influence the homeliest trifles swelled to feats beyond his strength. There was, for instance, the putting on and off one's clothing: this infinite boredom ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... inward sadness he would not spare himself, and every week he went as usual to Queen's Gate to dine with his mother. But the long evenings tried him, and he found it difficult to hide his ennui and weariness from his mother's sharp eyes. One evening, just before Christmas, Anna made some remarks on his tired looks in her gentle, affectionate way, and he had ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass. His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement, and now felt the weight of ennui, were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention. In spite of the deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint, either from the blush of modesty, or from the strong emotion of passion, though its form and outline were beautiful, many of the ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... him, her chin upon her ungloved hand. Was there pose in these depictions of Mr. Hugo Canning as a morose recluse? She thought not: his light bitterness rang true enough, the note of a man really half-desperate with ennui. And she read his remarks as a subtle sign of his confidence, an acknowledgment of acquaintance ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... is, I am two-thirds ill to-day, and the most faultless style and theme in our language would weary me. I am possessed by the evil spirits of ennui, unrest, and disgust at myself and all the world, present company always excepted. Do you know of any spell that can ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... the world. Would to-morrow ever come? She counted on her fingers the hours that had still to crawl by before she could get back to school—counted twice over to be sure of them—and all but yawned her head off, with ennui. But time passed, and passed, and nothing happened. She was on the verge of tears, when two black heads bobbed up above the fence, the boys scrambled over, red and breathless, and hurried her ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... Alexander I[A]. He was obliged, greatly against his will, to return to his father's country house. Dirty, poor, and miserable did the paternal nest seem to him. The solitude and the dullness of a retired country life offended him at every step. He was devoured by ennui; besides, every one in the house, except his mother, regarded him with unloving eyes. His father disliked his metropolitan habits, his dress-coats and shirt-frills, his books, his flute, his cleanliness—from which he justly argued that his son regarded him with a feeling ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... professional baseball player and street-car conductor, was to his mind as impassable. It was she who had first suggested the possibility of a bridge between them. His conception of her mental states was as dim as our dreams of the inhabitants of Mars. Of her ennui in that life which seemed to him all lightness and pleasure, of the romance with which she invested his commonplace days, of the possibilities she read in his personality, he had no conception; but to the lingering of her fingers in his own, to the glance of her eyes, the primitive ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... of curiosity.] Incuriosity. — N. incuriosity, incuriousness &c. adj.; insouciance &c. 866; indifference, lack of interest, disinterest. boredom, ennui (weariness) 841; satiety &c. 639; foreknowledge (foresight) 510;. V. be incurious &c. adj.; have no curiosity &c. 455; take no interest in &c. 823; mind one's own business. Adj. incurious, uninquisitive, indifferent; impassive ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... every play. There was talk of Paris and possible new volumes of verse, homage to Walt Whitman, Maragall, questioning about Emily Dickinson. About us was a smell of old horsehair sofas, a buzz of the poignant musty ennui of old towns left centuries ago high and dry on the beach of history. The group grew. Talk of painting: Zuloaga had not come yet, the Zubiaurre brothers had abandoned their Basque coast towns, seduced by the bronze-colored ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... are in a state of profound idleness, which to me is a luxury; and we should all, I believe, have been in a state of high enjoyment, had it not been for the detestable cold gales and much rain, which always gives much ennui to children away from their homes. I received your letter of 13th June, when working like a slave with Mr. Sowerby at drawing for my second volume, and so put off answering it till when I knew I should be at leisure. I was extremely glad to get your letter. I had ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... very clever and somewhat profane satire, such as Voltaire might have written had he been a German of the nineteenth century. It opens with Jupiter complaining to Mercury of ennui (eine langweilige Existenz), and that he is not what he was when young. Mercury advises a trip to Leipzig fair, where he may get good medical advice for his gout, and certainly will see something new. They go, and hear various dealers sing the catalogues of their goods. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various
... servants—preparing his food herself, watching for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her discretion, her disinterested benevolence not only defied danger (that were little to a woman of her temper), but endured a lengthened trial, all the ennui caused by the necessity of keeping her house, continued self-control, and the thousand small daily sacrifices which, to a vain, dissipated, proud, impatient woman, must have been hard to bear. Now, if ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... not with weariness. They jump to get into action again. From a life of too much excitement I have gone to the other extreme. I shall be dead of ennui in ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... meditated from of old on the infinitely little; and under these genuflections, risings, sittings, shiftings, grimacings on all parts, and the endless droning eloquence of Bishops invoking Heaven, her ennui, not ill-humored or offensively ostensible, was heartfelt and transcendent. At one turn of the proceedings, Bishop This and Chancellor That droning their empty grandiloquences at discretion, Sophie Charlotte was distinctly ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... She uttered no reproaches. She took me as I was, and for three years our life together has been to me one long unbroken harmony. Our tastes were very similar. She was well read, receptive, a charming companion. Ennui was a word of which I have forgotten the meaning. And it seemed so with her, too, for she ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pirate ought to be an interesting process," she conceded, her rare smile flashing. "It should prove a cure for ENNUI, but then I'm never a victim ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... intrusion of a respectable man into his haunts. So he had money enough to procure his peculiar garb, a "mersheen" to run with and fight for, a girl to console him, the "Old Bowery Theatre" to beguile him from his ennui, and the Bowery itself to disport his glory in, he was content. Rows were numerous in this quarter, and they afforded him all the other relaxation he desired. If there be any truth in the theories of Spiritualism, let ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of his muddy Epoch. Sure enough, he was a proud lofty solemn Kaiser, infinitely the gentleman in air and humor; Spanish gravities, ceremonials, reticences;—and could, in a better scene, have distinguished himself by better than mere statuesque immovability of posture, dignified endurance of ennui, and Hapsburg tenacity in holding the grip. It was not till 1735, after tusslings and wrenchings beyond calculation, that he would consent to quit the Shadow of the Crown of Spain; and let Europe BE at peace ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... punctuated by nightmares, marvellously woven out of nothing, and with no psychological value—the human part of the book being a sort of picturesque pathology at best, the representation of a series of states of nerves, sharpened by the tragic ennui of the country. There is a cat which becomes interesting in its agonies; but the long boredom of the man and woman is only too faithfully shared with the reader. La-Bas is a more artistic creation, on a more solid foundation. It is a study of Satanism, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... increased, when the system is stimulated into rather stronger action than usual, as after a copious dinner, and at the beginning of intoxication; and diminished, when it is only excited into somewhat less activity than usual, which is termed ennui, or ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... Midi some of those troubadours whose romantic airs and graceful verses were so appreciated in the little courts of the south of France and, later, in the gloomy castles of the nobles of the north. Great was the prevalence of ennui in these fortresses, in which there was but little sunshine and a great dearth of all other refining and civilizing influences. It was impossible to be engaged in warfare or the chase all the time, and the wandering pilgrim, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... times she must be missed; and could not think, without pain, of Emma's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui, from the want of her companionableness: but dear Emma was of no feeble character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped would bear her well and happily ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... who, however delicate, interesting as a study, and as it were picturesque on the stage of life, are themselves, after all, essentially passive, uncreative, and therefore necessarily not of first-rate importance in literature. Taken for what it is worth, the expression of this mood—the culture of ennui for its own sake—is certainly carried to its ideal of negation by Amiel. But the completer, the positive, soul, which will merely take [25] that mood into its service (its proper service, as we hold, is in counteraction ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... to do? I have thought it over carefully. I think, my friend, that you will have to marry a Mrs. Shandy, who will know nothing of love or of passion, and will not trouble herself about Madame de Mortsauf or Lady Dudley; who will be wholly indifferent to those moments of ennui which you call melancholy, during which you are as lively as a rainy day,—a wife who will be to you, in short, the excellent sister of charity whom you are seeking. But as for loving, quivering at a word, anticipating happiness, giving it, receiving it, experiencing ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... how it is, but my frame is one peculiarly susceptible to ennui. There's no man so instantaneously bored. What activity does this singular constitution in all cases produce! All who are sensitive to ennui do eight times the work of a sleek, contented man. Anything but a large chair by the fireside, and a family circle! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... feel isolated? I do, too. And I'm going to get out. I'm tired of decorating a set where the shuttle-cock of conversation is worn thin, frayed, ragged! Where the battledore is fashionable scandal and the players half dead with ennui and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... jamais mes partitions sans etre gagne par la tristesse et sans penser que de morceaux a retoucher! En composant, je n'ai jamais connu d'autre muse que l'ennui." ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... from ennui and kindle into attentiveness, then soulfulness as he swayed them with the touch of his fingers on the keys was no mean triumph. To draw men out of lolling ease into tense and unconsidered attitudes; to cause women's lips to part and their pupils to grow ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... he began them. Much better marry a respectable pork-butcher outright, and have at least the healthful exercise of chopping sausage-meat to fill up the stray gaps in the conversation. In that condition of life, they say, people are at any rate perfectly safe from the terrors of ennui. However, the season was over at last, thank Heaven; and in a week or so more they would be at dear old ugly Dunbude again for the whole winter. There Hilda would go sketching once more on the moorland, and if this time she didn't make that stupid ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Ennui, before long, gave place to grumbling, and that to recrimination; and from what the others could not help hearing, through the boarded-up doors and the floor of the loft, Tom and his wife had a cat-and-dog time ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, as might a child have toyed with a bauble. I mean to say, I was ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... series of tales of fashionable life came out in 1809, and contained among other stories 'Ennui,' one of the most remarkable of Miss Edgeworth's works. The second series included the 'Absentee,' that delightful story of which the lesson should be impressed upon us even more than in the year 1812. The 'Absentee' was at first only an ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... fathers in times of Indian massacres. When they went after the cows or to hoe the corn, they took their guns with them, and turned no corner without a sharp lookout against ambush. No doubt such a condition of affairs has this advantage, that it makes ennui impossible. There is always something to live for, if it be only to avoid ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... articles in our morning paper about the coddling of criminals; and witty writers will have it that prisons are gentlemen's clubs where all the comforts of refined life are combined with a voluptuous idleness, or with only work enough to avert ennui. Criminals are depicted as waiting in cues at the gates of prisons for admission, like the public at the doors of a popular theater; though at the same time in another column, you may find the statement that, in view of modern legal technicalities, it has become almost impossible to get a ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitute for productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them, in order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absolute repose and ennui. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... tender Hegenheim, brilliant Langeac!—ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in old times for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are you now? Though my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and the treachery of friends, yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet figures come rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and their kindnesses, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reveille que le ridicule, mais il l'attrape en volant; il a de la grace et de la finesse dans ce qu'il dit mais il ne sais pas causer de suite; il est distrait, indifferent; il s'ennuierait souvent sans une tres bonne recette qu'il a contre l'ennui, c'est de s'endormir quand il veut. C'est un talent que je lui envie bien; si je l'avais, j'en ferais grand usage. Il est malin sans etre mechant; il est officieux, poli; hors son milord March, il n'aime rien: on ne ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... with his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... if the worst penalties are escaped, indulgence brings at least satiety, the "heart high cloyed," a blunted capacity for enjoyment, ennui, restlessness, and depression of spirit. Keen as its zest may be at the outset, it is short-lived at best; and with the ensuing emotional fatigue, pleasures pall, life seems empty, robbed of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... compelled to use her feet, but always poised in air; a woman, rich, brilliant, and beautiful, and—here was the key-note of her life—always, year in and year out, warmed by somebody's admiration, whose she didn't much mind nor care, so that it gratified her pride and relieved her of ennui. The other—and this one he loved with his whole soul—a woman of forty-six, with a profound belief in her creeds; quixotic sometimes in her standards, but always sincere; devoted to her traditions, to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... second of time, I declare I saw no seriousness here beyond that of ennui. The church began to fill with personages of all ranks and conditions. First, opposite our seats came a company of fat grenadiers of the National Guard, who presently, at the word of command, put their muskets down against benches ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... Railway, thunders through those solitudes; strangely awakening their echoes; and inviting even the bewildered Tourist to reflect, if he could. The bewildered Tourist sees rock-walls heaven-high on both hands of him; River and he rushing on between, by law of gravitation, law of ennui (which are laws of Nature both), with a narrow strip of sky in full gallop overhead; and has little encouragement to reflect, except upon his own sorrows, and delirious circumstances, physical and moral. 'How much happier, were I lying in my bed!' thinks the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... on a coil of rope and blithely hummed an old song—"Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!" Oh, how she had wearied of bumping, heaving, bumping! At first she had enjoyed the storm. It was a new kind of play, and the mise-en-scene was quite adequate. But ennui had surged in again long before danger had surged out. And now she considered that some later sensation was due her, just as supper after an evening of fasting. In such a way, her life long, Jacqueline had sustained existence. Her ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... toward her person, the buoyancy of her youthful spirit enabled her to triumph, in a manner, over those influences of depression, and she was the life and the ornament of every gay scene. As her mind had been but little cultivated, she had but few resources within herself to dispel that ennui which is the great foe of the votaries of fashion; and, unconscious of any other sources of enjoyment, she plunged with all the zest of novelty into an incessant round of balls, operas, theaters, and masquerades. Her mind, by nature, was one of the noblest texture, and by suitable culture ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... was, had made interest at the war-office for the refusal of all such requests on the part of his scapegrace offspring. Haubitz junior took patience for another year, and then, in a moment of extreme disgust and ennui, threw up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... are continually travelling, my husband and I, to collect match-boxes and to change our ennui by changing country. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to content ourselves with a single variety of ennui. But we have made all our preparations and arrangements for travelling: all our plans have been laid out in advance, and it gives us no trouble, whereas it ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... weeks and weeks, long before you came. I begged my father to find me a companion of my own age, not an Arab girl, but a European, to teach me things and make me clever like my mother. He believed I was pining with ennui; and because he had put real happiness out of my life, he was willing to console me as well as he could in some easy way. In spite of Aunt Mabrouka, who may have guessed what was in my mind, he trusts you completely, because you are your ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... mental ennui left him without a vestige of the power of resistance. An inborn tendency to scepticism did not prevent him from yielding to an influence which originally was farther removed from the inclinations of his soul than the vulgar bustle ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and my brother was enraptured, for we had both gained our objects. I had got rid of him and ennui. He had got rid of me, and the displeasure of the grand dispensers of place and pension. No time was lost in forwarding me to make my bow at the Horse Guards; and my noble brother lost as little time in making me put ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... away with ineffable tedium. At one time she was so beaten down by ennui that she almost offered her assistance to her sister in reference to the wedding garments. In spite of the very bitter words which had been spoken in the morning she would have done so had Sophy afforded her the slightest opportunity. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... no other passengers for the east-bound Flyer; and finding he still had some minutes to wait, Ormsby lounged into the telegraph office. Here the bonds of ennui were loosened by the gradual development of a little mystery. First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said "Well?" in the imperious tone common to his kind, he evidently received a ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... a track of Capri's vice, Of lupanars and gaming-scores, Fretted with wine and blood and dice, Like ennui of ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... produce no sustained emotion; and its characters being drawn, without selection, from vulgar prototypes, would excite more disgust than interest. The drama?—but there the new theory of art becomes too ridiculous: a tragedy on such a plan would be received with alternate yawns of ennui and shouts of laughter. All these are pertinent questions; for fine art, in literature, music, sculpture, painting, architecture, forms a homogeneous circle under one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... round in groups, drinking their coffee; and bold spirits—Mr. Pix, for instance, ventured upon a cigar as well. Meanwhile, Anton roamed through the suite of rooms, looking at the paintings on the walls, turning over albums, and fighting off ennui as well as he could. In this way he reached the end room, and stopped there in amazement. Sabine stood before him, tears falling from her eyes. She was sobbing silently, her slender form shaken by the conflict within, but yet she was trying ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... bevy of young people. Up the path they came, talking, laughing, shifting like a pattern in a kaleidoscope, gay, handsome, sophisticated, modishly dressed, unconventionally mannered, yet showing, most of them, the traces of that youthful ennui so often betrayed in these modern days by those who of all the world ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... much said about war, naval combats, projected expeditions, and military operations, made and to be made, in America, that I will spare you the ennui of a gazette. I have, besides, related to you the few events that have taken place since the commencement of the campaign. I have been so fortunate as to be constantly employed, and I have never made an unlucky encounter with ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... intimate experiences, these moonlight sentimentalities, these listless dreams, &c., out of place in the gaslight glare of concert-rooms, crowded with audiences brought together to a great extent rather by ennui, vanity, and idle curiosity than by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... myself in such a labyrinth there was no temptation, so taking advantage of the lateness of the hour, and muttering a few complimentary promises of returning at the first opportunity, I escaped the ennui of this endless scrubbery, and got home, with the determination of being wiser and less curious if ever my stars should bring me again to the Hague. To-morrow I bid it adieu, and if the horses but second ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... ideas and hopes that—except to the Italian Opera—I have not been often. The Opera Comique I visited only once; it was tolerably well, and no more, and, for myself, I find the tolerable intolerable in music. At the Grand Opera I heard Robert le Diable and Guillaume Tell almost with ennui; the decorations and dresses are magnificent, the instrumental performance good, but not one fine singer to fill these fine parts. Duprez has had a great reputation, and probably has sung better In former days; still he has a vulgar mind, and can never have had any merit as ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the growth of this Colony was rapid from the first. The Dutch, dissatisfied with the way matters were conducted in New York, and worn out when shopping by the ennui and impudence of the salesladies, came to Charleston in large numbers, and the Huguenots in Charleston found a hearty Southern welcome, and ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... example but saw no reason why she need give up all gaiety and pleasure because of her change of heart. But Jean took her away from the court and all of its dissipations and dangers and brought her here to the old chateau, where she was literally buried alive in stupidity and ennui. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... which may have been due to ennui, but also to the tingling of her nerves. Clyffurde saw that her hands were never still for a moment; she was either fingering the snowdrops in her belt or smoothing out the creases in her lace scarf; from time to time she raised her head and a tense expression came into ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the coolness of the evening. This man was the Marquis Don Vegal, knight of Alcantara, of Malta, and of Charles III. He had a right to appear in this pompous equipage; the viceroy and the archbishop could alone take precedence of him; but this great nobleman came here from ennui and not from ostentation; his thoughts were not depicted on his countenance, they were concentrated beneath his bent brow; he received no impression from exterior objects, on which he bestowed not a look, and heard not the envious reflections of ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... said Mr. Britton, with a smile. "Work! Just as soon as you are able, find some work to do. Did we but know it, work is the surest antidote for the poisonous discontent and ennui of this world, the swiftest panacea for its pains and miseries; different forms to suit different cases, but every form brings healing and blessing, even down to the humblest ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... doctrine; she cannot admit it, and, fired by a desire to devote herself body and soul to some useful work, she chooses the laborious profession of a school-mistress in the village. But this humble and unpleasant career does not satisfy her. Little by little ennui and anguish drive her ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Ennui, inertia, dry rot—and four men, sometimes silently, sometimes violently cursing their isolation, but always cursing it—afraid in their souls lest they fall to cursing one another aloud as they had begun ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... former, and did not make his appearance till the next day. I now had recovered my strength, and determined to take some decided measures, but how to act I knew not. I reflected all night, and the next morning (that is, according to my supposition) I attacked the basket. Whether it was that ennui or weakness occasioned it, I cannot tell, but either way, I drank too much wine, and was ready for any daring deed, when Melchior again ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... knowing their objects, and in consequence without immediately exerting any of our muscular or sensual motions to attain them: as in the beginning of the passion of love, and perhaps of hunger, or in the ennui of indolent people. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... entire crowd; Buck Daniels stood opposite. The horsehair plied back and forth. And Daniels noted the hands, lean, tapering like the fingers of a girl of sixteen. They were perfectly steady; they were the hands of one who had struggled, in life, with no greater foe than ennui. ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... power to make any one fall in love with them, they are on the outside of the discussion now before us. If they are unhappy enough to receive no attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized with ennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets, cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily. She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... It is but a moderate distance from here, and if you can moderate your young footsteps, and your American quick walk, to an old man's pace, I would go there with you some day. In this languor and ennui of my life, I spend some time in local antiquarianism, and perhaps I might assist you in tracing out how far these traditions of yours may have any connection with reality. It would be curious, would it not, if you had come, after ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... those who had believed in it here. For how I should be tormented! The pious would crowd about me, saying, 'Were we not right? Did we not predict it? Has it not turned out exactly so?' And thus even up yonder there would be everlasting ennui." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... with curiosity as to each other's past. The chief is under sealed orders; both German and Russian had left their respective countries for good of Kaiser and Tsar; the American is an adventurous son of millionaire residing in New York. Weary of ennui in the metropolis, this Yankee aristocrat seeks diversion in trips to all parts of the globe. All of these are ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet spongy soil, the reeking grass—everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable grave, away from the leaden ennui of life. Suddenly the detective's keen eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden excitement. It was that of a woman in a gray shawl and a brown bonnet standing before a railed-in grave. She ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... work. When some one asked him why he consented to remain so long alive—"I have no fault," said he, "to find with old age." That was a noble answer, and worthy of a scholar. For fools impute their own frailties and guilt to old age, contrary to the practice of Ennui, whom I mentioned just now. In ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... think of drowning myself yet: and what I wrote to you was a sort of safety escape for my poor flame . . . It is only idle and well-to-do people who kill themselves; it is ennui that is hopeless: great pain of mind and body 'still, still, on hope relies': the very old, the very wretched, the most incurably diseased never put themselves to rest. It really gives me pain to hear you or any one else call me a philosopher, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... it was too late, and after a futile pursuit round the entire country, he had the chagrin of seeing the French enter Stuttgart. Here Villars remained but a few days. Wilhelmine said afterwards that 'l'ennui de Stuttgard' had proved a greater defence than the entire Imperial army! Be this as it may, Villars evacuated Stuttgart in an amazingly short time, and retired eastwards to the ancient town of Schorndorf. Now the Duchess-mother ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... he ran the soul of the desert, born of the sun, palms, ennui, flies, the sand, and Allah knows what besides, suddenly sat up in Jill's eyes and laughed, and as she laughed the words "Go always alone in ze night to 'is oasis bien aimee" rang in the girl's ears, as a strange and startling ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... wife, and children yawned, With a long, slow, and drear ennui, All human patience far beyond; 715 Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... because there hung over London a fog so thick that two or three times I lost my way, and no cab was to be had at any price. The few cabmen then in the streets were leading their animals slowly along, making for their stables. It was one of those depressing London days which filled me with ennui and a yearning for my own clear city of Paris, where, if we are ever visited by a slight mist, it is at least clean, white vapour, and not this horrible London mixture saturated with suffocating carbon. The fog was too thick for any passer to read the ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... hotel there was now a good deal of foolish drinking; foolish, because in this climate it is very bad for the human system, and in these surroundings of much interest and excitement the relief of its exaltation from monotony or ennui or routine could hardly ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... door is ever shut, and curtains only are hung in the doorways, so that this little wild one was in and out and everywhere just as it hit her fancy. She had never been taught even to know her letters; she had never been kept to any task; she was a complete slave of idleness, restlessness, and ennui. 'It is time for Louisa to go to England,' was quietly remarked by the parents; and no one present controverted ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... me?" Ah, what style! "The love that gnaws at my vitals!" Monsieur Percinet has gone forth into the great world, and he is right. I shall do as he has done. How can I possibly stay here and die of ennui? Now let him come, I am ready to fly with him! I almost ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... in a thankful spirit, Maitland settled himself as comfortably as he might in the smoker and endeavored to find surcease of ennui in his collection of extras. In vain: even a two-column portrait of Mr. Dan Anisty, cracksman, accompanied by a vivacious catalogue of that notoriety's achievements in the field of polite burglary, hardly stirred his interest. An elusive resemblance which he traced in the features of Mr. Anisty, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... for the discharge of these solemn responsibilities. He is like a carriage clock, able to sleep in any conceivable position; and such is his mental constitution that, when not sleeping, he is able to "be present" hour after hour without feeling any desire for change of occupation. Ennui never troubles him, time never hangs heavy on his hands; he sits as patiently as a cow and chews the cud of pan suparee, and he bespatters the walls with a sanguinary pigment produced by the mastication of the same. He needs no food, but he goes out to drink water thirty-five ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... to have to force some sort of a reply, and hard not to lose patience with the other woman's perpetual giggling. It was easy enough for her. She knew that her husband, a major- general, was safe behind the lines on the staff of a high command. She had fled from the ennui of a childless home to enter into the eventful life ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... opens with a dance given in honour of Tatiana's birthday. Onegin feels bored and out of sheer ennui he begins to flirt with Olga. The thoughtless girl willingly yields to the young man's attentions and promises to dance the cotillion with him, in order to punish her lover for his jealousy.—This tactless behaviour enrages Lenski to such a degree, that he ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... for sleep and ten for enjoyment of the arts and luxuries. Then we really should enjoy them, and if we couldn't have them unless we did our six hours' stint, ennui and the dissipations that ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Lieutenant Schwatka. He is endowed by nature with robust health and a powerful frame, to which fatigue seems a stranger. A cheerful disposition that finds amusement in the passing trifle, and powers of concentration that entirely abstract him from his surroundings, keep him free from "ennui" that is not the least disagreeable feature of life in this wilderness. And he possesses a very important adjunct, though to the uninitiated it may seem trifling, a stomach that can relish and digest fat. The habit of command gives him a power over our Inuit allies that is not to be disregarded. ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder |
