Literary notes about routine (AI summary)
In literature, "routine" operates on various levels—it can signify the secure, predictable cadence of daily life or expose a stifling monotony that hinders creativity and growth. Some authors depict routine as a liberating force that pulls individuals away from everyday thoughts, suggesting that breaking free of the habitual [1] can lead to new insights. In contrast, writers like Sinclair Lewis and Kipling illustrate routine as an almost mechanical, unvarying pattern that governs both the minutiae of personal existence [2, 3] and the structured operations of larger institutions, such as in military training or governmental affairs [4, 5]. Philosophers and educators, meanwhile, examine the way routine, when left unchallenged, may result in an unthinking adherence to habit, thereby curtailing the capacity to adapt or innovate [6, 7, 8]. Yet even in narratives where the routine is depicted as oppressive or dull—as in the weariness expressed by characters stuck in repetitive occupations [9, 10]—its disruption often serves as a catalyst for transformation or heightened self-awareness [11, 12]. Thus, whether embraced as a necessary underpinning of order or critiqued as a barrier to personal and societal progress, routine remains a powerful literary motif that captures the dualities of comfort and constraint.
- It gets you out of a routine of ordinary thoughts.”
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - I have scarcely enough money for my quiet Paris routine .
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo by Juliette Drouet and Louis Guimbaud - Worse, he had to discharge Graff and this was a part of office routine which he feared.
— from Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis - The routine of military training and of instruction was then fully established, and has remained almost the same ever since.
— from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman — Complete by William T. Sherman - The Consul is away, and the Vice-Consul sick; so the routine work has been attended to by a clerk.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - (b) Routine action, action which is automatic, may increase skill to do a particular thing.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - But the phrase is also used to mean ruts, routine ways, with loss of freshness, open-mindedness, and originality.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - So far as ability of control, of management, was concerned, it amounted to rule-of-thumb procedure, to routine.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - He tired of the sameness and routine of his occupation.
— from Pushing to the Front by Orison Swett Marden - And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë - And it was on this morning, and at the saloon of Robert Ward, that there came a break in the established routine.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - A sudden break was made in the routine of our lives.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
