Indolence Quotes - Page 5

• Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.

  Tacitus

  Men, Fame, Industry

  "Annales". Book by Tacitus, XVI. 18, AD 117.

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• Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Lazy, Sloth

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, godlike hatred.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Hate, Hypocrisy, Hatred

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 298, 1895.

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• If the mind is wearied by study, or the body worn with sickness, It is well to lie fallow for a while, in the vacancy of sheer amusement; But when thou prosprest in health, and thine intellect can soar untired, To seek uninstructive pleasure is to slumber on the couch of indolence.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Lying, Mind, Vacancy

  "Proverbial Philosophy (Of Recreation)". Book by Martin Farquhar Tupper, 1839.

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• It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.

  W. H. Auden

  Stupid, Long, People

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• When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Selfish, Exercise, Luxury

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.39

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• What is public opinion? It is private indolence.

  Georg Brandes

  Public Opinion, Opinion

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.5, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

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• A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.

  Joseph Addison

  Philosophical, Passion, Men

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of [the Right Honourable] Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 483-600. The Guardian. The lover. The present state of the war. The late trial and cenviction of Count Tariff. The Whig-examiner. The Freeholder, no. 1-30”, p.449

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• My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Sea, People

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• Somewhere in the wide range of activity between the hard physical effort of wading for long hours against a swift current in a rocky stream, casting steadily, and the indolence of lying quietly in the sun waiting for a bobber to go under there is a type of angling to suit everyone's mood and everyone's pocketbook. Fishing is fishing wherever it is found... Angling's problems are never solved.

  Lee Wulff

  Lying, Lakes, Sea

  Lee Wulff (1989). “The compleat Lee Wulff: a treasury of Lee Wulff's greatest angling adventures”, Dutton Adult

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• A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf', Which at first seemed a vessel with sweet wine For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline You went through sloven spirit, craven heart And cynic indolence. And here the art Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce And made your shame our shame ~ Your head in bronze!

  Edgar Lee Masters

  Sweet, Art, Wine

  Edgar Lee Masters, “On A Bust”

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• Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Difficult

  Benjamin Robert Haydon, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1876). “Correspondence and Table-talk: With a Memoir”, p.270

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• They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Black, Poverty

  Henry Ward Beecher (1887). “Patriotic Addresses in America and England from 1850 to 1885, on Slavery, the Civil War and the Development of Civil Liberty in the United States”

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• It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Revenge, Hate, Thinking

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• Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Passion, Europe

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• Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Revenge, Honesty, Pride

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• Many a good intention dies from inattention. If, through carelessness or indolence, or selfishness, a good intention is not put into effect, we have lost an opportunity, demoralized ourselves, and stolen from the pile of possible good. To be born and not fed, is to perish. To launch a ship and neglect it is to lose it. To have a talent and bury it, is to be a "wicked and slothful servant." For in the end we shall be judged, not alone by what we have done, but by what we could have done.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Opportunity, Selfishness, Wicked

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reach, have from that time not only ceased to advance, and improve in their performances, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their principal, till they are reduced to beggary, and left without resources.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Men, Vanity, Gone

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• Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion.

  William Wilberforce

  Hands, Providence, Seducing

  William Wilberforce (2005). “A Practical View of Preferred Christians”, p.15, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Ignorance, Light, Simplicity

  Thomas Chalmers (1836). “Works”, p.314

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• I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train.

  Harriet Martineau

  Inspiration, Hands, Sitting Down

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.156, Broadview Press

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• the most dangerous temptations are not due to the active, sudden flames of desire, 'the lusts of the flesh,' but to the disinclinations of the flesh, its indolence and sluggishness, our tendency to become creatures of habit.

  Sigrid Undset

  Flames, Temptation, Lust

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• There is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose the feathery foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their grandfathers.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Fashion, Men, Doubt

  "Humanity in the city". Book by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, 1854.

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• To will the impossible is usually a sin of indolence.

  Fanny Lewald

  Laziness, Impossible, Sin

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• I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing. ... It's thinking time, it's hanging-out time, it's daydreaming time. You know, it's lie-around-the-bed time, it's sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to any work.

  Grace Paley

  Lying, Writing, Thinking

  Grace Paley, Gerhard Bach, Blaine H. Hall (1997). “Conversations with Grace Paley”, p.110, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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