Idle Quotes - Page 12

• The age which we live in is not suited to idle complacency or to pleasant dreams of past greatness.

  Vincent Massey

  Dream, Past, Greatness

  "Speaking Of Canada" by Vincent Massey. Address at the Convocation of the University of Manitoba, October 28, 1952, 1959.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• No idle word should be uttered. I understand a word to be idle when it serves no good purpose, either for myself or for another, and was not intended to do so.

  Ignatius of Loyola

  Saint, Purpose, Should

  Saint Ignatius (of Loyola) (1951). “The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: A New Translation Based on Studies in the Language of the Autograph”

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The gold-barr'd butterflies to and from And over the waterside wander'd and wove As heedless and idle as clouds that rove And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow.

  Joaquin Miller

  Butterfly, Clouds, Snow

  Joaquin Miller (1873). “Songs of the Sun-lands”, p.66

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gloating is a superficial glowing, floating is an idle flowing, and bloatedness is the paralysis of blowing up; because silent movement results in loud victories.

  Criss Jami

  Glowing, Victory, Movement

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.40, Criss Jami

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

  Mary Oliver

  Prayer, Blessed, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2008). “The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays”, p.65, Beacon Press

  129 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... do not listen to vain and empty talk, in which the majority of world-loving people spend their time, and do not take pleasure in it. For the law says: 'You shall not raise false reports' (Ex. 23:1). Solomon says: 'Remove far from me vanity and lies' (Prov. 30:8). The Lord said: 'But I say to you, every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment' (Mt. 12:36).

  Lorenzo Scupoli

  Christian, Lying, Men

  10 Copy quote

• God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Struggle, Heart

  "Pearls of Wisdom". Book by Swami Vivekananda, edited by the Ramakrishna Mission, 2010.

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• God, I pray light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for thee.

  Jim Elliot

  Light, May, Sticks

  10 Copy quote

• On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.

  Nipsey Hussle

  Worst Enemy, Missions, Idle Time

  257 Copy quote

• The dangers which threaten us are twofold: First, from the Confederate forces, composed of men whose earnest convictions and reckless bravery it is idle to deny.

  Robert Dale Owen

  Men, Ethos, Bravery

  26 Copy quote

• I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Art, Children

  21 Copy quote

• It is idle to waste time and discuss whether it was within our power and duty to see whether we could prepare a Bill better than the Remedial Bill.

  Charles Tupper

  Power, Bills, Waste

  5 Copy quote

• It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Science, Hands, People

  29 Copy quote

• The purpose of marriage is not to have pleasure and to be idle but to procreate and bring up children, to support a household. This, of course, is a huge burden full of great cares and toils. But you have been created by God to be a husband or a wife and that you may learn to bear these troubles.

  Martin Luther

  Love, Children, Husband

  "Luther's Works: Lectures on Genesis".

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It would be idle to say that we were not, from time to time, aware that a volcano slumbered fitfully beneath us. There were dark sides to the Slavery Question, for master, as for slave.

  Mary Virginia Terhune

  Dark, Volcanoes, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

• The wind, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear. Before the era of steam-engines, windmills were tried for draining mines; but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Country, Powerful, Wind

  William Stanley Jevons (1866). “The coal question: an enquiry concerning the progress of the Nation, and the probable exhaustion of our coal-mines”, p.144

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic-that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Men, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Dreaming is a form of action. Idleness is a form of action. The idle man stares at the sky and sees what constitutes our eternal ceiling. The sky is one of the things that constructs us, one of our constants. But it is not what people believe. I should like to close this circle by turning over in my bed and scrutinizing the stars.

  Philippe Starck

  Dream, Stars, Believe

  8 Copy quote

• She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Intelligent, Evil

  4 Copy quote

• We Indians are Latin America's moral reserve. We act according to a universal law that consists of three basic principles: do not steal, do not lie and do not be idle.

  Evo Morales

  Lying, Latin, Law

  "'Capitalism Has Only Hurt Latin America'". Interview with Jens Glüsing, Hans Hoyng, www.spiegel.de. August 28, 2006.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Dream, Reality, Achievement

  Gordon B. Hinckley (2009). “Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes”, p.94, Harmony

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Idle hands make fretful minds.

  Shelley Shepard Gray

  Hands, Mind, Idle Hands

  22 Copy quote

• Another hundred years may pass before we understand the true significance of Apollo. Lunar exploration was not the equivalent of an American pyramid, some idle monument to technology, but more of a Rosetta stone, a key to unlocking dreams as yet undreamed.

  Gene Cernan

  Dream, Technology, Keys

  30 Copy quote

• If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Fashion, Men, Temptation

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1869). “Miscellanies: The four Georges. The English humorists. Roundabout papers”, p.38

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas.

  Nick Cave

  Powerful, Flames, Hands

  79 Copy quote