Leisure Quotes - Page 27

• Great sorrows have no leisure to complain:
  Least ills vent forth, great griefs within remain.

  William Goffe

  Grief, Sorrow, Complaining

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• Your job today tells me nothing of your future--your use of your leisure today tells me just what your tomorrow will be.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Jobs, Use, Today

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• "War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

  Edmund Burke

  Peace, War, Military

  "A Vindication of Natural Society". Book by Edmund Burke, 1756.

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• A wedding in haste is worth two at leisure.

  Gelett Burgess

  Two, Haste

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• It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Self

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Employment, Noble

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Transition, Habit

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.7, e-artnow

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• The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Class, Long

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• The taste of the more recent accessions to the leisure class proper and of the middle and lower classes still requires a pecuniary beauty to supplement the aesthetic beauty, even in those objects which are primarily admired for the beauty that belongs to them as natural growths.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Aesthetic Beauty, Growth

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.93, Courier Corporation

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• All his leisure clothes were absurd - jokes, really - as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed.

  Edmund White

  Clothes, Absurd, Jokes

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

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• No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.

  James K. Polk

  Errors, Government, President

  Polk, James K. (1910). “The diary of James K. Polk during his presidency, 1845 to 1849, now first printed from the original manuscript in the collections of the Chicago historical society; Volume 4”, p.261, Best Books on

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• I ask Thee for a thankful love,
  Through constant watching wise,
  To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
  And to wipe the weeping eyes,
  And a heart at leisure from itself,
  To soothe and sympathize.

  Anna Laetitia Waring

  Sympathy, Wise, Heart

  "Father I know that all my Life, Hymns and Meditations" by Anna Laetitia Waring, (p. 2), 1850.

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• The artist labors while he may, But finds at best too brief the day; And, tho' his works outlast the time And nation that they make sublime, He feels and sees that Nature knows Nothing of time in what she does, But has a leisure infinite Wherein to do her work aright.

  Henry Abbey

  Nature, Artist, Work Out

  Henry Abbey (1884). “The City of Success: And Other Poems”

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• Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.

  Josef Pieper

  Self, Opposites, Age

  "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" by Josef Pieper, translated by Gerald Malsbary, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, (p. 27), 1998.

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• Coca-Cola remains emblematic of the best and worst of America and Western civilization. The history of Coca-Cola is the often funny story of a group of men obsessed with putting a trivial soft drink "within an arm's reach of desire." But at the same time, it is a microcosm of American history. Coca-Cola grew up with the country, shaping and shaped by the times. The drink not only helped to alter consumption patterns, but attitudes toward leisure, work, advertising, sex, family life, and patriotism.

  Mark Pendergrast

  Country, Sex, Attitude

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• To see Good Tennis! What divine joy Can fill our leisure, or our minds employ? Let other people play at other things; The King of Games is still the Game of Kings.

  James Kenneth Stephen

  Kings, Games, Play

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• A man that steps aside from the world and has leisure to observe it without interest and design, thinks all mankind as mad as they think him.

  E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax

  Art, Philosophy, Men

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• There is more to life than material well-being. Who would claim that the wholly wage-dependent family enjoys the dignity, the security, the range of choice and the autonomy (not to mention the leisure and freedom) of the family even partially supported by capital ownership?

  Louis O. Kelso

  Wisdom, Choices, Politics

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• The sooner the world solves its economic problems, the sooner its inhabitants can afford leisure and peace and get on with the non-material things that are inherently important: the work of mind and spirit that is gloriously and uniquely human, the work that no machine can ever do.

  Louis O. Kelso

  Wisdom, Mind, Important

  Louis O. Kelso, Patricia Hetter Kelso (1967). “Two-factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; how to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals”, New York : Vintage Books

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• For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich.

  Plutarch

  Men, Hands, Envy

  Plutarch (2000). “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.450, Modern Library

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• Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wisdom, Class, Community

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.7, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wise, Wisdom, Civilization

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.10, Lulu Press, Inc

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• It should be the privilege of every worker to take advantage of all the improved methods of working that relieve him from the tedium and fatigue of purely mechanical toil, for by this means he gains leisure for the thought necessary to working out his designs, and for the finer touches that the hand alone can give. So long as he remains master of his machinery it will serve him well, and his power of artistic expression will be freed rather than stifled by turning over to it work it is meant to do.

  Gustav Stickley

  Mean, Expression, Hands

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• How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defense to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and riot in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not.

  John Keats

  Self, Mad, Imagination

  John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters of John Keats”

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• Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.

  George Eliot

  Believe, Vacuums, Philosopher

  George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.834, ShandonPress

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