Idle Quotes - Page 21

• For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  White, Decision, Feelings

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 186), 1895.

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• There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.

  Helen Schucman

  Thinking, Levels, Form

  Helen Schucman (2009). “A Course in Miracles”, p.49, Course in Miracles Society

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• There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Technology, Long Ago, Doubt

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• How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were tobegin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Christian, Men, Long

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.516, Delphi Classics

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• Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Fashion, Real, Communication

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• Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Symbolism, Fancy

  Alfred North Whitehead (1985). “Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect”, p.61, Fordham Univ Press

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• O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother; for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.

  Ephrem the Syrian

  Brother, Art, Kings

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• In idle wishes, fools supinely stay. Be there a will and wisdom finds a way.

  George Crabbe

  Success, Wisdom, Wish

  George Crabbe, John Crabbe (1834). “The poetical works of the Rev. George Crabbe: in eight volumes”, p.247

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• If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Love, Peace, Growing Up

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.120, Courier Corporation

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• A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

  Rumi

  Love, Sweet, Stars

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.19, Lulu.com

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• Will you not covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no more housewives, but queens? There is no putting by that crown; queens you must always be; queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and sons; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. . . . But alas! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

  John Ruskin

  Queens, Husband, Son

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• How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them downe!

  John Aubrey

  Curiosity, Would Be

  Thomas Hearne, John Aubrey (1813). “Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: to which are Added, Hearne's Journeys to Reading, and to Whaddon Hall, the Seat of Browne Willis, Esq., and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey, Esq: The Whole Now First Published from the Originals in the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum, with Biographical and Literary Illustrations ...”, p.333

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• Radicalism usually prospers in the gap between rising expectations and declining opportunities. This is especially true where the population is young, idle, and bored; where the art is impoverished; where entertainment—movies, theater, music—is policed or absent altogether; and where young men are set apart from the consoling and socializing presence of women.

  Lawrence Wright

  Art, Opportunity, Men

  Lawrence Wright (2006). “The Looming Tower”, p.107, Vintage

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• Game, noun: Any unserious occupation designed for the relaxation of busy people and the distraction of idle ones. It's used to take people to whom we have nothing to say off our hands, and sometimes even ourselves.

  Etienne Bonnot de Condillac

  Games, Hands, People

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• The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy, at a great price, bad wine made in Boston.

  Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

  Country, Wine, Boston

  Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (2001). “Two Years Before the Mast”, p.85, Digital Scanning Inc

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• Whenever I produce my best work, it's always because I've spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.

  Will Self

  Produce, Best Work, Working It

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• I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.

  Harlan Coben

  Writing, Voice, Should

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• The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

  George Henry Lewes

  Real, People, Dreamer

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• Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Essence

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• We will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it.

  Plato

  Believe, Men, Doe

  Plato, John M. Cooper, D. S. Hutchinson (1997). “Complete Works”, p.886, Hackett Publishing

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• Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole object of pleasing God.

  Martin Luther

  Exercise, May, Doe

  Martin Luther (1896). “Luther's Primary Works: Together with His Shorter and Larger Catechisms”

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• True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Moving, Grace, Would Be

  Charles H. Spurgeon (2001). “The Soul-Winner”, p.8, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

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• No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?

  William Wilberforce

  Ignorance, Men, World

  William Wilberforce (2013). “A Practical View”, p.74, Simon and Schuster

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• Be ashamed to catch yourself idle.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Ashamed

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.250

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• The new shopping malls make possible the synthesis of all consumer activities, not least of which are shopping, flirting with objects, idle wandering, and all the permutations of these.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Flirting, Shopping, Synthesis

  Jean Baudrillard, Francesco Proto, Keith Broadfoot (2006). “Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard”, Academy Press

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