Idleness Quotes - Page 5

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  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  Edmund Burke

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Witty

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• Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Action, Corruption, Stagnation

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.37

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• My mind works in idleness. To do nothing is often my most profitable way.

  Virginia Woolf

  Happiness, Mind, Way

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.163, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Passion, Men, Boredom

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• Of all our faults, the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Faults, Excuse

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• Sluggish idleness--the nurse of sin.

  Edmund Spenser

  Nurse, Sin, Sluggish

  Edmund Spenser (1850). “Edmund Spenser's Knight of the red cross; or Holiness [The faerie queene, book 1]. The antique spelling is modernized, obsolete words are displaced [&c., by W. Horton].”, p.39

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• Idleness is the key of beggary.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Keys, Beggary

  Spurgeon, Charles H. (2015). “The Salt Cellars”, p.269, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

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• In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms' banquet.

  Horace Mann

  Country, Men, Oysters

  Horace Mann (1850). “A Few Thoughts for a Young Man: A Lecture, Delivered Before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, on Its 29th Anniversary”, p.49

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• Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mind, Body, Infirmity

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• The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Self, Independence

  J. G. HOLLAND (1866). “PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS”, p.111

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• I live an idle burden to the ground.

  Homer

  Burden, Idle

  Homer (1806). “The Iliad of Homer”, p.290

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• Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits

  Winston Churchill

  Opportunity, May, Time Management

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• Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, People, Politics

  Thomas Jefferson, J. Jefferson Looney (2004). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815”, p.212, Princeton University Press

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• Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Mind, Purity

  Mahatma Gandhi (1977). “Collected Works”

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• Idleness is paralysis.

  Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

  Paralysis

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• The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Perfection, Laziness, Youth

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.166, Wordsworth Editions

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• Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Inspirational, Positive, Time

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Eugenia Stanhope (1827). “Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son”, p.130

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• Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

  Benjamin Franklin

  Sea, Laziness, Virtue

  Benjamin Franklin (2012). “Wit and Wisdom from Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Care, Poverty

  Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Piozzi, James Boswell (1787). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous, to which are Now Added, Biographical Anecdotes of the Doctor, Selected from the Late Productions of Mrs. Piozzi, Mr. Boswell, ...”, p.205

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• No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Tired, Feelings, Constitution

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• Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing, and doing it assiduously.

  Thomas Chandler Haliburton

  People, Perfect, Genius

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• Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves

  Anne Baxter

  Home, Temptation, Devil

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• Busy idleness urges us on.

  Horace

  Busy, Urges

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 384-85, Epistles, Book I, XI. 28, 1922.

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• How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!

  William Cowper

  Idlers, Employment, World

  William Cowper, Robert Southey, William Harvey (1835). “The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations. With a Life of the Author”, p.15

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• Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Failure, Cigarette Smoke, Light

  "The Pure and the Impure". Book by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, 1932.

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