Idleness Quotes
More Idleness Quotes
Grief is a species of idleness.
— 1773 Letter to Mrs Thrale, whose son had just died,17 Mar.
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— 1742 The Dunciad, bk.4, l.341-4.
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— 1881Virginibus Puerisque,'An Apology for Idlers'.
Let him look to it, who is pleased with the game of Tarocco, that the only signification of this word Tarocco, is stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Coblers, and the vulgar, to play at most for the fourth part of a Carlino, at Tarocchi, or at Trionfi, or any Sminckiate whatever: which in every way signifies only foolery and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve (signs) as children do.
— Mention made on the Tarocchi in his Capitolo del Gioco della Primiera col Comento di messer Pietropaulo da San Chirico (1526).
Let us give to our republic a fourth power with authority over the youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, habits, and republican morality. Let us establish this Areopagus to watch over the education of the children, to supervise national education, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the republic, to denounce ingratitude, coldness in the country's service, egotism, sloth, idleness, and to pass judgment upon the first signs of corruption and pernicious example.
simón bolívar— As quoted in Rise of the Spanish-American Republics as Told in the Lives of their Liberators (1918) by William Spence Robertson, p. 239
It is not industry, but idleness, that is degrading.
calvin coolidge— The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge, Cosmopolitan Book Corporation (1929), p. 68.
Research! Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.
Benjamin Jowett— In conversation with Logan Pearsall Smith. Reported in Smith's Unforgotten Years (1938) p. 169.
A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
Robert Louis Stevenson— An Apology for Idlers.
Poverty is the reward of idleness.
— Strauss, Emanuel (1994). "267". Dictionary of European Proverbs. I. Routledge. p. 252.
A day Spent in a round of strenuous idleness.
william wordsworth— Bk. IV, l. 377.
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— My Life
There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort ... The need of work is in me.
Guy de Maupassant— As quoted in Contemporary Portraits (1920) by Frank Harris, p. 263
The frivolous work of polished idleness.
— Sir James Mackintosh, Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, Remarks on Thomas Brown.
There is no remedy for time misspent; No healing for the waste of idleness, Whose very languor is a punishment Heavier than active souls can feel or guess.
— Sir Aubrey de Vere, A Song of Faith, Devout Exercises, and Sonnets.
Worldlings revelling in the fields Of strenuous idleness.
william wordsworth— William Wordsworth, This Lawn, a Carpet all alive.
There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work.”
— Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), "Du mérite personnel", Aphorism 12
Seneca, in advising retirement, had also warned of dangers. In a dialogue called “On Tranquility of Mind,” he wrote that idleness and isolation could bring to the fore all the consequences of having lived life in the wrong way, consequence that people usually avoided by keeping busy that is, by continuing to live life in the wrong way.
— pp. 29-30 (How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010))
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
— Proverbs, XXXI. 27. (Sourced)
Alternate translation: Nothing is so certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work. (translator unknown).
— Letter LXI: On meeting death cheerfully, line 2.
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
— Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Letters to his Son. Dec. 26, 1749.
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— 1881Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.2.
idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
hosea ballou— Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 384.
idleness is the great corrupter of youth, and the bane and dishonor of middle age. He who, in the prime of life, finds time to hang heavy on his hands, may with much reason suspect that he has not consulted the duties which the consideration of his age imposed upon him; assuredly he has not consulted his happiness.
blair hugh— P. 345. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Give me to live with Love alone And let the world go dine and dress; For Love hath lowly haunts... If life's a flower, I choose my own 'T is "love in idleness".
samuel laman blanchard— "Dolce far Niente", Stanza 4, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it). idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding.
john n. gray— "A difficult business," New Statesman (2009-04-16)
idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
cesare pavese— 1938-12-10
There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work . Be he never so benighted and forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in idleness alone is there perpetual Despair.
albert pike— Ch. XXII : Knight of the Royal Axe, or Prince of Libanus, p. 341
Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The Pains and Penalties of idleness.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, Book IV (1743), line 341.
idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
hosea ballou— Hosea Ballou, Manuscript, Sermons.
