Idleness Quotes - Page 13

• Idleness is an enemy of the soul.

  Benedict of Nursia

  Soul, Enemy

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• If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Real, Men, Intellectual Arrogance

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• Flee idleness... for no one is more exposed to such temptations than he who has nothing to do.

  Robert Bellarmine

  Temptation, Exposed

  Saint Robert Bellarmine , Aeterna Press (2016). “Saint Robert Bellarmine Collection [3 Books]”, p.1410, Aeterna Press

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• The principle trap that the devil sets for young people is idleness.

  John Bosco

  People, Devil, Principles

  108 Copy quote

• Avoid idleness, and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment; for lust easily creeps in at those emptinesses where the soul is unemployed and the body is at ease; for no easy, healthful, idle person was ever chaste if he could be tempted; but of all employments, bodily labor is the most useful, and of the greatest benefit for driving away the Devil.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Space, Soul, Lust

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• A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Thinking, Errors, Ideas

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.15

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• Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

  Voltaire

  Life, Rust, Brilliant

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• Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

  William Shakespeare

  Flower, Purple, White

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 2, sc. 1, l. 161

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• But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

  Stephen Spender

  Reading, Civilization, Creative

  1980 Journal entry, 4 Jan.

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• More free time means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk, beat his wife - and watch TV.

  Robert M. Hutchins

  Mean, Drunk, Wife

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• Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves To ruminate, and by such dreaming high Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings He furleth close; contented so to look On mists in idleness—to let fair things Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

  John Keats

  Summer, Dream, Spring

  John Keats (1847). “The Poetical Works of John Keats”, p.244

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• He lacks much who has no aptitude for idleness.

  Louise Wilder

  Work, Simplicity, Aptitude

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• The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ignorance, Simplicity, Savages

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.113, David M Gross

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• The great virtues of the German people have created more evils than idleness ever did vices

  Paul Valery

  People, Evil, Insulting

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• In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Real, Jealous

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1853). “The Life and Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.209

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• Woe to those who lead idle lives. Idleness is a dreadful illness and must be cured in childhood. If it is not cured then, it can never be cured.

  Carlo Collodi

  Childhood, Woe, Illness

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• Life is best enjoyed when time periods are evenly divided between labor, sleep, and recreation...all people should spend one-third of their time in recreation which is rebuilding, voluntary activity, never idleness.

  Brigham Young

  Sleep, People, Balance

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• Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain.

  Plato

  Passion, Luxury, Political

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• Of the time that is allotted to man here on the earth there is none to lose or waste. After suitable rest and relaxation there is not a day, hour or minute that we should spend in idleness, but every minute of every day of our lives we should strive to improve our minds and to increase the faith of the holy Gospel, in charity, patience, and good works, that we may grow in the knowledge of the truth as it is spoken and prophesied of and written about.

  Brigham Young

  Men, Mind, Relaxation

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• Idleness only leads to bad deeds

  Magnus Stenbock

  Historical, Deeds

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• Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Work, Long, Effort

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2807, Library of Alexandria

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• As brightness is to rustiness, so labor excelleth idleness.

  Thales

  Brightness, Labor

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• There is a fundamental law that the tissue of the human body will waste away through idleness and disuse. Conversely, muscles and vessel that are stressed grow and increase in capacity. This same basic law also applies to spiritual and intellectual growth and can be achieved only by continual nourishment and effort in day-to-day living.

  Clarence Robison

  Life, Spiritual, Law

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• The lot of man is ceaseless labor, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.

  T. S. Eliot

  Men, Harder, Labor

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• The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Work, Men, Rich

  Henry Ward Beecher (1850). “Industry and idleness: with causes of dishonesty : to which are appended six warnings”, p.16

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