Idle Quotes - Page 24

• Love does not stay idle.

  St. Catherine of Siena

  Doe

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• I call that man idle who might be better employed.

  Socrates

  Men, Might, Employed

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• For a well-made cup of coffee is the proper beginning to an idle day. Its aroma is beguiling, its taste is sweet; yet it leaves behind only bitterness and regret. In that, it resembles, surely, the pleasures of love.

  Anthony Capella

  Sweet, Regret, Coffee

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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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• An idle man has a constant tendency to torpidity. He has adopted the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. He hugs himself into the notion, that God calls him to be quiet.

  Richard Cecil

  Running, Lying, Men

  Richard Cecil, Josiah PRATT (the Elder.) (1854). “Remains of the Rev. Richard Cecil ... With a view of his character, by the Rev. Josiah Pratt ... To which is prefixed a memoir of his life signed: J. Cecil . Tenth edition”, p.177

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• Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited--or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society.

  Errico Malatesta

  Organization, Boss, Enemy

  Errico Malatesta (2015). “Life and Ideas: The Anarchist Writings of Errico Malatesta”, p.45, PM Press

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• 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. Most of us are inherently lazy. We would rather play than work. We would rather loaf than work...But it is work that spells the difference in the life of a man or woman. It is stretching our minds and utilizing the skills of our hands that lift us from mediocrity.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Dream, Work, Reality

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• You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil.

  Walter E. Williams

  Ignorance, Hands, Evil

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• Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Exercise, Cake, Tea Drinking

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay”, p.653

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• The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.

  Albert Einstein

  Life, Work, Heart

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• As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan.

  Jan Schakowsky

  Atrocities, Genocide, Jew

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• There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people.

  George Whitefield

  People, Earth, Faces

  John Gillies, George Whitefield (1839). “Memoirs of Rev. George Whitefield”, p.579

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• Unless man has the wit and the grit to build his civilization on something better than material power, it is surely idle to talk of plans for a stable peace.

  Francis Bowes Sayre, Sr.

  Peace, Men, Civilization

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• You must obey this now for a law, that he that will not work shall not eat (except by sickness he be disabled). For the labors of thirty or forty honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain a hundred and fifty idle loiterers.

  John Smith

  Men, Law, Honest

  John Smith (2006). “Generall Historie of Virginia Vol 1: New England & the Summer Isles”, p.174, Applewood Books

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• When Rick Perry says I can do for America what I've done for Texas, pay attention. That's no idle threat.

  Jim Hightower

  Texas, America, Attention

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• From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Evil, Temptation

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.47

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• I never notice what is said about me. I am credited with things I have never done, and abused for them. It would be idle to attempt to contradict newspaper talk and street rumors.

  Jay Gould

  Rumor, Would Be, Done

  "Jay Gould : A Character Sketch" by William T. Stead, February 1893.

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