idleness quotes

Grief is a species of idleness.

- Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
  Letter to Mrs Thrale, whose son had just died,17 Mar.

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

- Herman Melville
  Mardi, ch.63.

She marked thee there, 662 Stretched on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The pains and penalties of idleness.

- Alexander Pope
  The Dunciad, bk.4, l.341^4.

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.

- Sir Stephen Harold Spender
  Journal entry, 4 Jan.

Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.

- Robert Louis Stevenson
Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.2.

Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of a deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

- Robert Louis Stevenson
Virginibus Puerisque,'An Apology for Idlers'.