Indolence Quotes - Page 6

• Leisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Philosophy, Perfect, Solitude

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• Could you understand the meaning of light if there were no darkness to point the contrast? Day and night, life and death, love and hatred, since none of these things can have any being at all apart from the existence of the other, you can no more separate them than you can separate the two sides of a coin.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Night, Light, Life And Death

  "Green Dolphin Country".

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• The Lord has not redeemed you so you might enjoy pleasures and luxuries or so that you might abandon yourself to ease and indolence, but rather so you should be prepared to endure all sorts of evils.

  John Calvin

  Luxury, Evil, Ease

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• You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence; but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage nations, is governed by books.

  Voltaire

  Book, Ambition, Beer

  Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.390, e-artnow

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• Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.

  Edward Gibbon

  Fate, Unhappy, Might

  Edward Gibbon, William George Smith (1857). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.75

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• They are travelling cheaply, with that touch of indolence and occasional luxury that comes only from having real resources. They live in Levis and sunlight. Sometimes they brush their teeth in streams.

  James Salter

  Real, Luxury, Teeth

  James Salter (1995). “A Sport and a Pastime”

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• Prayer is often an argument of laziness: "Lord, my temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it would be a great task for me to correct it; and wilt thou be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along easier?" If prayer was answered under such circumstances, independent of action of natural laws, it would be paying a premium on indolence.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Prayer, Independent, Law

  Henry Ward Beecher (1870). “Lecture-room Talks: A Series of Familiar Discourses on Themes of General Christian Experience”, p.54

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• Photography works upon the human eye: what is seen is reflected in the brain without the need for complicated thought. In this way the bourgeoisie takes advantage of the mental indolence of the masses and does good business as well.

  Willi Munzenberg

  Photography, Eye, Brain

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• The obstacles that distract thought are disease, apathy, doubt, carelessness, indolence, dissipation, false vision, failure to attain a firm basis in yoga, and restlessness.

  Patanjali

  Yoga, Vision, Doubt

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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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• Indolence of course is an absolutely crucial part of the creative process: you do not find poets sitting in rows in cavernous word factories, staring at screens. They are rather to be found lolling on the sofa or strolling through the groves, nursing their melancholic temperaments and losing themselves in extended reveries.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Nursing, Creative, Sitting

  "A lack of elegy" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. November 7, 2006.

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• Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.

  John Osborne

  Fear, Self, Censorship

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• When the toll upon carriages of luxury, upon coaches, post-chaises, etc. is made somewhat higher in proportion to their weight, than upon carriages of necessary use, such as carts, wagons, etc. the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute in a very easy manner to the relief of the poor, by rendering cheaper the transportation of heavy goods to all the different parts of the country.

  Adam Smith

  Country, Luxury, Necessary Use

  Adam Smith, John Ramsay McCulloch (1870). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”

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• There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Two, Contentment, Firsts

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1825). “Works”, p.169

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• Not indolence but congenial work is man's Divinely allotted portion.

  Joseph Hertz

  Men, Portions

  Joseph Herman Hertz (1936). “Hamishah Humshe Torah Im Ha-Hafterot: Genesis”

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• O ye whose years unfolding fair Are fresh with youth, and free from care, Should vice and indolence desire The garden of your souls to hire, No parleys hold-reject the suit, Nor let one seed the soil pollute. My child their first approach beware, With firmness break the insidious snare, Lest as the acorns grew and throve Into a sun-encircled grove, Thy sins, a dark o'ershadowing tree Shut out the light of Heaven from thee.

  Lydia Sigourney

  Children, Dark, Garden

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• Comfort and indolence are cronies.

  Thomas Hood

  Comfort, Cronies

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• None deserve praise for being good who have not the spirit to be bad: goodness, for the most part, is nothing but indolence or weakness of will.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Fear, Atheism, Weakness

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• Seeming contentment is real discontent, combined with indolence or self-indulgence, which, while taking no legitimate means of raising itself, delights in bringing others down to its own level.

  John Stuart Mill

  Real, Mean, Self

  John Stuart Mill (2016). “Considerations on Representative Government”, p.86, John Stuart Mill

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• Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.

  Walter Chrysler

  Funny, Jobs, Hard Work

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• There is a case, and a strong case, for that particular form of indolence that allows us to move through life knowing only what immediately concerns us.

  Alec Waugh

  Strong, Moving, Future

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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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• Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients; action, pleasure and indolence. And though these ingredients ought to be mixed in different proportions, according to the disposition of the person, yet no one ingredient can be entirely wanting without destroying in some measure the relish of the whole composition.

  David Hume

  Happiness, Different, Three

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.746, Delphi Classics

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• A useless life is an early death.
  [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Life, Useless, Early Death

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• As an architect, I always have mixed feelings. On the one hand, your fingers are itching. As a human being, you are happy to participate in the indolence.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Hands, Feelings, Architect

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