Routine Quotes

“Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.”
― W. H. Auden

“We all have our routines," he said softly."But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Us going to have a cup of coffee. Then maybe it all won't seem so bad.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“I cannot stand repetition: routine divides me from potential novelties within my reach.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“I slide to my knees and say, "Please let this be over." Then, I'm not ready for it to be over.”
― Andre Agassi, Open

“Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The routine produces. But each day, nevertheless, when you try to get started you have to transmogrify, transpose yourself; you have to go through some kind of change from being a normal human being, into becoming some kind of slave.

I simply don’t want to break through that membrane. I’d do anything to avoid it. You have to get there and you don’t want to go there because there’s so much pressure and so much strain and you just want to stay on the outside and be yourself. And so the day is a constant struggle to get going.

And if somebody says to me, You’re a prolific writer—it seems so odd. It’s like the difference between geological time and human time. On a certain scale, it does look like I do a lot. But that’s my day, all day long, sitting there wondering when I’m going to be able to get started. And the routine of doing this six days a week puts a little drop in a bucket each day, and that’s the key. Because if you put a drop in a bucket every day, after three hundred and sixty-five days, the bucket’s going to have some water in it.

http://is.gd/ouArv5”
― John McPhee

“APPROACH

Rain is falling. Winter approaches. I drive towards it. In the slow rain. In the semi-darkness. Cello music is playing in the car. The deep sad sound of the cello. It almost swamps me. Routine endeavours to swamp me. The everyday paying of bills.

But I paint men walking in a city of icebergs and crystal. Some of the icebergs are red. I paint a woman swimming in green wavy water. Surrounded by desert mesas. Bright orange in the sunlight. With darker orange for shadows. I paint two people. With purple and pink and yellow and blue circles overlapping the boundaries of their bodies. Dancing.

Life is not ordinary. When I see you tonight I will press my lips to your eyelids. Each one in turn. I will rub my fingertips over the skin on the back of your hands and around your wrists. I will sigh. I will growl. I will whinny. I will gallop into your smile. One sharp foot after the other.”
― Jay Woodman, SPAN

“The Marquesa would even have been astonished to learn that her letters were very good, for such authors live always in the noble weather of their own minds and those productions which seem remarkable to us are little better than a day's routine to them.”
― Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

“Routine is liberating, it makes you feel in control.”
― Carol Shields, The Republic of Love

“His eagerness had turned into a routine; he embraced her at the same time every day. It was a habit like any other, a favourite pudding after the monotony of dinner.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“The more I took note of how my body and brain clicked along through the day, the more I realized that I spent a considerable amount of time banging around with a brain full of chatter; a rush of things to do, bills to pay, telephone calls, text messages, e-mails, worrying about my job or my looks, my boobs or my ass; I rushed from thing to thing, multitasking, triple-timing, hoping to cover all the bases, avoiding anything that might disrupt the schedule or routine. At times, I was so caught up in the tempo and pattern, the predictable tap, tap, tap of each day, that there was no time to notice the neighbors had moved out, the wind was sneaking in from the north, the sun was shifting on its axis, and tonight the moon would look like the milky residue floating inside an enormous cereal bowl. I wondered when I had become a person who noticed so little.”
― Dee Williams

“Lauren: Like how many people you're...like how many times your life is gonna totally change and then, like, start all over again? And you'll feel like what happened before wasn't real and what's happening now is actually... (she trails off)”
― Annie Baker, Circle Mirror Transformation

“For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.”
― Philip Roth, Exit Ghost

“Usipobadilisha maisha yako maisha yako yatakubadilisha.”
― Enock Maregesi

“Then everyone would retreat for a nap, after which we would have coffee and cake, sometimes an argument.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives

“Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be but it doesn't feel right”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“What you practice too often, you use without thinking.”
― Robert Jordan

“Jack missed the normality of merely reading the paper.”
― Tom Clancy, Executive Orders

“Hyacinth said that it was a gift to greet a new day, and that you needed to meet it in a way that showed how grateful you were to have your life spared. Phaedra wasn't sure what Hyacinth meant, exactly, but she did like the routines and rituals they had, the way they made a kind of container so her mind could wander to the things she thought and felt and dreamed about.”
― Naomi Jackson, The Star Side of Bird Hill

“There is a distinction between a relationship which has a routine and a relationship which becomes routine”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“Good tradecraft keeps espionage routine and boring.”
― Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History

“it offends the continuum of human dignity to treat people like the appendage of highly efficient machines.”
― Simon Head

“Children with autism are constantly testing and pursuing truth. They are a bundle of contradictions. They love order and routine, yet often have the most amazingly inventive and creative minds. They may appear to follow rules, but are also the most likely people to come up with a revolutionary new idea. They feel emotion intensly, but often seem to struggle to read facial expressions.”
― Adele Devine, Colour Coding for Learners with Autism: A Resource Book for Creating Meaning through Colour at Home and School

“Rest and comfort are two different things. Rest is a planned temporary time to refresh and refocus the leader. Comfort is when you settle into unproductive routines and accept satisfactory or unsatisfactory results.”
― Gary Rohrmayer

“If there’s a single idea I emphasize when people ask about writing, it’s that there’s no right way to produce a book. But I do think that whatever you do, you should do regularly, whether it’s waking up at midnight and drinking vodka or waking up at dawn and drinking tea, whether it’s sitting in a monkish study or writing on the back of a flatbed truck. The analogy I like is children’s literature: in a lot of children’s books, there’s a huge institutional structure (Hogwarts, for example) whose presiding safety allows the children’s imagination to run free. The more consistent your habits are – and this ties into having your tools nailed down – the more secure your brain will be to run free and create.”
― Charles Finch

“I was going to shave this morning but mislaid my chin”
― Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes volume 2

“Long life, short life-did it matter when each day was the same, when humans were incapable of living for the moment because of their fundamental need for order, for the comfort of everyday routine.”
― Gemma Malley, The Legacy

“Quand tous les jours sont ainsi semblables les uns aux autres, c'est que les gens ont cessé de s'apercevoir des bonnes choses qui se présentent dans leur vie tant que le soleil traverse le ciel.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Even Damocles developed a routine.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script