Idle Quotes - Page 23

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ocean, Ships, Stuck

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated)”, p.699, Delphi Classics

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...one cannot but wonder how an environment can make people despair and sit idle and then, by changing the conditions, one can transform the same people into matchless performers.

Muhammad Yunus

People, Despair, Wonder

Muhammad Yunus (2007). “Banker To The Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty”, p.171, PublicAffairs

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I do want to get married. It's a nice idea. Though I think husbands are like tattoos--you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life instead of just wandering into a tattoo parlor on some idle Sunday and saying, 'I feel like I should have one of these suckers by now. I'll take a thorny rose and a "MOM" anchor, please. No, not that one--the big one.

Sloane Crosley

Tattoo, Mom, Husband

Sloane Crosley (2008). “I Was Told There'd Be Cake”, p.120, Penguin

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Woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference ... It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm.

Jane Austen

Character, Evil, Mind

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Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men, Madness, Be Careful

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I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.

Emily Bronte

Gothic, Heathcliff, Destruction

Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.597, Penguin

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If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumbered here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend: And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call; So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends.

William Shakespeare

Good Night, Dream, Liars

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 5, sc. 2, l. 54

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What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?

Veronica Roth

Empty, Dies

Veronica Roth (2013). “Divergent Series (Books 1-3) Plus Free Four, The Transfer and World of Divergent”, p.67, HarperCollins UK

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I think the most joyous thing in life is to loaf around and watch another bloke do a job of work. Look how popular are the men who dig up London with electric drills. Duke's son, cook's son, son of a hundred kings, people will stand there for hours on end, ear drums splitting. Why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while watching other people work.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Kings, Jobs, Son

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A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

Henry Miller

Inspirational, Lying, Book

Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

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Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it on riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?

Samuel Gompers

Country, Peaceful, Gold

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Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.

E. O. Wilson

Principles, Variation, Levels

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There is not a tool, an implement, or a machine that has not resulted in a decrease in the contribution of human labor. Labor is not made permanently idle [though]; when replaced in one special category... it turns its attack against other obstacles on the main road to progress.

Frederic Bastiat

Special, Progress, Tools

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It is idle to talk of civil liberties to adults who were systematically taught in adolescence that they had none; and it is sheer hypocrisy to call such people freedom loving.

Edgar Friedenberg

People, Hypocrisy, Liberty

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Don't be made useless or idle with despair. Gather yourself around your strength for light does the darkness most fear.

Jewel

Light, Darkness, Despair

Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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Only a great man, believe me, and one whose excellence rises far above human failings, will not allow anything to be stolen from his own span of time, and his life is very long precisely because he has devoted to himself entirely any time that became available. None of it lay uncultivated and idle, none was under another man's control, for guarding it most jealously, he found nothing worth exchanging for his own precious time.

Seneca the Younger

Believe, Men, Long

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O, what I owe to the file, the hammer, and the furnace of the Lord Jesus! I know that he is no idle husbandman - he purposes a crop.

Samuel Rutherford

Jesus, Suffering, Purpose

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To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages.

Mahatma Gandhi

God, People, Promise

Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.123, A&C Black

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For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

Dream, Imagination, Islam

Mahatma Gandhi (1957). “Christian Missions, Their Place in India”

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Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices.

Mahatma Gandhi

Thinking, Use, Saving

Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “My Picture of Free India”

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Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one's neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.

Mahatma Gandhi

Men, Consideration, Mankind

Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.60, Rajpal & Sons

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Purification is never for the selfishly idle, it accrues only to the selflessly industrious.

Mahatma Gandhi

Purity, Purification, Pure

Mahatma Gandhi (1975). “Collected Works”

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Go on, fair Science; soon to thee
Shall Nature yield her idle boast;
Her vulgar lingers formed a tree,
But thou hast trained it to a post.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Nature, Science, Yield

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Nothing is greater or more fearful sacrilege than to prostitute the great name of God to the petulancy of an idle tongue.

Jeremy Taylor

God, Names, Tongue

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What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all - the realisation at last of the meaning of the word 'commonwealth.'

William Morris

Mean, Heart, Men

"How I Became a Socialist". Justice newspaper, www.marxists.org. June 16, 1894.

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