Mundanity Quotes

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Art is that which helps you see
beauty in the mundane...
Let my life be a work of art.”
― Eric Overby, Senses

“The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals.”
― Dave Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

“Going to bed and waking in the morning (I woke, most often, too early) were bad times—so many hundreds of evenings and mornings. Sometimes I wondered who or what sends us this senseless repetition of days and nights and seasons and years; is it not like hearing a stupid boy whistle the same tune over and over, till you wonder how he can bear it himself?”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Moments of extreme joy or sorrow always feel surreal and incredible, which tells us that life is mostly a voyage of mundanity between distant, analogous shores of disbelief.”
― Stewart Stafford

“In the silence of a morning, in the mundane tasks of the day, in the smile of a precious baby, Jesus comes to us.”
― Allene vanOirschot, Daddy's Little Girl: A Father's Prayer

“Life was more blurry than fast, slipping into a mesmerizing normality. Disguised as humdrum and mundane, the routine began to suck the enchantment and marvel out of everything.”
― Amy Weinland Daughters, You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened

“I once asked Arpit Bala, an influencer with a brutally loyal following, about the resentment felt by office-goers against self-employed content creators. He spoke of how, even as they like being featured in his Instagram 'lives', guests wonder why such casual conversations, the kind they used to have in their school days, are so hyped on social media. 'Exactly... You talked like this. You joked like this. You had that energy of being completely ridiculous like a child. But you won't do it now. Why? If it's that easy, do it. Quit the job and try. But you won't. Because you're in a fucking soulless job, and you've been conditioned to live a certain kind of serious life. Your risk appetite is dead. The backbencher version of you is gone. And you can't perform that self anymore. It takes guts to act your youth again in front of a camera and be completely free,' he argued.”
― Anurag Minus Verma, The Great Indian Brain Rot : Love, Lies and Algorithms in Digital India

“... It is not a curse to be confined to water.
Although to an onlooker, the poem argues, a fish might seem trapped in its pond—although to you and I, it may seem to know nothing of the world on land—it is not so. A fish can still admire the reflection of spring clouds on the water. It can still taste the blossoms that dapple its surface and imagine itself swimming among the trees. It understands more than we will ever realize.
His words were so beautiful, so vivid, that I could almost hear that injured fish speaking to me from amidst its suffering: Do not pity me.
My life might be smaller than yours, but it is full of joy and worth living.
Do not assume that I dream of greatness. Do not assume that I wish to be reborn in a different time or a different place, in a different life. I wish only to admire the blossoms in this one.
Do not pity me—for I am exuberant!”
― Shen Tao, The Poet Empress