Idleness Quotes - Page 8

• And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
  Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Honey, Pairs, Sole

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2001). “The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.1033, Princeton University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality--counter-moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.

  Joseph Conrad

  Moving, Games, Police

  The Secret Agent ch. 4 (1907)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Vanity, Names

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.413

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Numbers, People

  4 Copy quote

• It seems to me that all of the evil in life comes from idleness, boredom, and psychic emptiness, but all of that is inevitable when you become accustomed to living at others' expense.

  Anton Chekhov

  Psychics, Boredom, Evil

  "My Life". Book by Anton Chekhov, 1896.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great talents, by the rust of long disuse,
  Grow lethargic and shrink from what they were.

  Ovid

  Long, Rust, Talent

  13 Copy quote

• [On filling out a grant application:] I seek an extended period of time, free from all distractions, so that I might be free to be distracted.

  Mary Ruefle

  Time, Might, Distraction

  Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.137, Wave Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is the natural occupation of the man of leisure.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Love, Men, Occupation

  12 Copy quote

• Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Leisure, Waste, Sin

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Claire Harman (1994). “The diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Virago Pr

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The haggardness of poverty is everywhere seen contrasted with the sleekness of wealth, the exhorted labour of some compensating for the idleness of others, wretched hovels by the side of stately colonnades, the rags of indigence blended with the ensigns of opulence; in a word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the most urgent wants.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Rags, Useless, Want

  "A Treatise On Political Economy". Book by Jean-Baptiste Say, p. I, 1932.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man's mind, under the general head of liberty.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Men, Mind, Liberty

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1825). “Works”, p.198

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.

  Edward Gibbon

  Arms, Exhausted, Politician

  Edward Gibbon (1831). “The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire”, p.61

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance, and folly.

  Plutarch

  Extravagance, Poverty, Poor

  4 Copy quote

• Hereditary wealth is in reality a premium paid to idleness.

  William Godwin

  Reality, Wealth, Premium

  William Godwin (1793). “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: And Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness”, p.804

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time's come: there's a terrific thunder-cloud advancing upon us, a mighty storm is coming to freshen us up....It's going to blow away all this idleness and indifference, and prejudice against work....I'm going to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years' time every man and woman will be working.

  Anton Chekhov

  Change, Blow, Men

  12 Copy quote

• Idleness is a great enemy to mankind. There is no friend like energy, for, if you cultivate that, it will never fail.

  Bhartrhari

  Enemy, No Friends, Energy

  13 Copy quote

• Of all our faults, the one we avow most easily is idleness; we persuade ourselves that it is allied to all the peaceable virtues,and as for the others, that it does not destroy them utterly, but only suspends the exercise of their functions.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Exercise, Laziness, Faults

  5 Copy quote

• We do not lack strength so much as the will to use it; and very often our imagining that things are impossible is nothing but an excuse of our own contriving, to reconcile ourselves to our own idleness.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Strength, Use, Impossible

  4 Copy quote

• It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Strong, Passion, Ambition

  5 Copy quote

• Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Taken, Knowledge, Understanding

  4 Copy quote

• Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders. . . . It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.

  Francois Fenelon

  Running, Wine, Men

  4 Copy quote

• The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sleep, Waiting, Eating

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.540, Рипол Классик

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Rocks, Years, Giving

  181 Copy quote

• Idleness ruins the constitution

  Ovid

  Ruins, Constitution

  4 Copy quote

• He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Relaxation, May

  4 Copy quote