Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.
- Renata Adler
Bores are not to be got rid of except by rough means. They are to be scraped off like scales from a fish.
- Christian Nestell Bovee
There are some kinds of men who cannot pass their time alone; they are the flails of occupied people.(Bonald, M.} There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
- Christian Nestell Bovee
It is to be hoped that, with all the modern improvements, a mode will be discovered of getting rid of bores; for it is too bad that a poor wretch can punished for stealing your pockethandkerchief or gloves, and that no punishment can be inflicted on those who steal your time, and with it your temper and patience, as well as the bright thoughts that might have entered into your mind (like the Irishman who lost the fortune before he had got it), but were frightened away by the bore.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Society is now one polished horde,
Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.
- Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron),
Don Juan (canto XIII, st. 95)
Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order to be heard out; for if people are unwilling to hear you; you had better hold your tongue than them.
- 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope
Those wanting wit, affect gravity and go by the name of solid men.
- John Dryden
The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrationa bipeds who hurt only themselves.
- Maria Edgeworth, Thoughts on Bores
The smaller the calibre of mind, the greater the bore of a perpetually open mouth.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
The biggest bore of all is he who is overflowing with congratulations.
- Thomas Hood
A tedious person is one a man would leap a steeple from.
- Ben Jonson
Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about.
- Louis Kronenberger
We are almost always wearied in the company of persons with whom we are not permitted to be weary.
- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
It is one of the vexatious mortifications of a studious man to have his thoughts disordered by a tedious visit.
- Sir Roger L'Estrange
Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores.
- James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
(l. 55)
One day ennui was born from uniformity.
[Fr., L'ennui naquit un jour de l'uniformite.]
- Antoine Houdart de la Motte
Bores to themselves, to others caviar.
- Phaedrus (Thrace of Macedonia)
Again I hear that creaking step!--
He's rapping at the door!
Too well I know the boding sound
That ushers in a bore.
- John Godfrey Saxe, My Familiar
He says a thousand pleasant things,--
But never says "Adieu."
- John Godfrey Saxe, My Familiar
He will steal himself into a man's favor and for a week escape a great of discoveries; but when you find out, you have him ever after.
- William Shakespeare
The symptoms of compassion and benevolence in some people are like those minute-guns which warn you that you are in deadly peril.
- Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine (Soimonoff)
The secret of making one's self tiresome is not to know when to stop.
- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire)
