Idle Quotes - Page 6

• And if he is lying and he double-crosses you, I’ll kill him for you.” From anyone else, it would have been an idle threat, and I smiled, feeling loved. (Ivy and Rachel)

  Kim Harrison

  Lying, Ivy, Feelings

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• I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.

  Susanna Clarke

  Silence, Solitude, After Hours

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.66, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

  Gore Vidal

  Taken, Gossip, Truth Is

  GORE VIDAL (1964). “JULIAN”

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• Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under.

  Lynn Austin

  Believe, Book, Numbers

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• They who love to inform themselves, are never idle. Though I have no business of consequence to take care of, I am nevertheless continually employed. I spend my life in examining things: I write down in the evening whatever I have remarked, what I have seen, and what I have heard in the day: every thing engages my attention, and every thing excites my wonder: I am like an infant, whose organs, as yet tender, are strongly affected by the slightest objects.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Writing, Attention, Care

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• And, indeed, I will at this point ask an idle question on my own account: which is better — cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Suffering, Wells, Accounts

  "Notes From Underground And The Grand Inquisitor".

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• The things that really matter don't mix with idle chatter.

  Mose Allison

  Silence, Idle Chatter, Matter

  "Celebrated Jazz Musician Mose Allison Dies At 89". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. November 15, 2016.

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• A Bradypus or Sloth am I, / I live a life of ease, / Contented not to do or die / But idle as I please.

  Michael Flanders

  Sloth, Ease, Indolence

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• If you create you will also wait, and while you're waiting you will want to be patient but not idle... responses from the world often take a long time.

  Eric Maisel

  Patience, Long, Waiting

  Eric Maisel (2000). “The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance”, p.236, Penguin

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• Mathematics is not merely an idle art form, it is an essential part of our society.

  Richard Hamming

  Art, Essentials, Our Society

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• Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp.

  Max Planck

  Knowledge, Mean, Science

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• Unquiet souls. In the dark fermentation of earth, in the never idle workshop of nature, in the eternal movement, yea shall find yourselves again.

  Matthew Arnold

  Death, Dark, Soul

  Matthew Arnold (1889). “Poems”

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• If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Responsibility, Pride, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt, Paul H. Jeffers (1998). “The Bully Pulpit: A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations”, p.115, Taylor Trade Publications

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• 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.

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• 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”

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• Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Suffering, Idlers, Leisure

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• I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake.

  Gustave Courbet

  Art, Copying, Prejudice

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• Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.

  Samuel Johnson

  Would Be, Useless, Theory

  Samuel Johnson (1798). “Dr. Johnson's Table Talk: Containing Aphorisms on Literature, Life, and Manners; with Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, Selected and Arranged from Dr. Boswell's Life of Johnson”, p.394

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• Who ever lives looking for pleasure only, his senses uncontrolled, immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, the tempter will certainly overcome him, as the wind blows down a weak tree.

  Gautama Buddha

  Blow, Wind, Tree

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• The romance of circumvention is one of the most destructive forces at work in our society. The American Idol freeway to greatness, Instagramming one's way into popular consciousness with selfies of our ass folds beneath short shorts, human growth hormone and performance-enhancing drugs for athletes, Adderall for the idle mind, reality television that sacrifices our dignity for fifteen lousy minutes.

  Daniel Gillies

  Athlete, Sacrifice, Reality

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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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• After having stopped the lower activities of the mind, it must be made receptive; and, instead of weaving all kinds of empty and idle thoughts, the mind should receive intuitions from above.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Intuition, Mind, Weaving

  Source: overmanfoundation.wordpress.com

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• He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

  John Keats

  Thinking, Indolence, Awake

  John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.440, e-artnow

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• I live an idle burden to the ground.

  Homer

  Burden, Idleness

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

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• Silence holds the door against the strife of tongue and all the impertinences of idle conversation.

  James Hervey

  Doors, Silence, Tongue

  James Hervey, William ROMAINE (1812). “Meditations and Contemplations ... To which is prefixed the life of the author: and a sermon on his death by the Rev. W. Romaine ... With ... engravings, etc. [With a portrait.]”, p.214

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