Idleness Quotes
More Idleness Quotes
Grief is a species of idleness.
— 1773 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— 1849 Mardi, ch.63.
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.
The frivolous work of polished idleness.
james mackintosh— Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830), Section VI: Foundation of a More Just Theory of Ethics — "Thomas Brown", paragraph 3.
The worst idleness is that of the heart. Think of the condition and prospects of a voiceless, thankless, prayerless heart.
elias lyman magoo— P. 346. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
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— p. 27 (Leisure, the Basis of Culture)
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 falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.
vauvenargues, luc de clapiers, marquis de— p. 172. (Reflections and Maxims (1746))
Let us be thankful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing' of idleness and won for us the 'curse' of labor.
mark twain— Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar (1897)
Let us be thankful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the 'blessing' of idleness and won for us the 'curse' of labor.
mark twain— Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar (1897)
For idleness is an appendix to nobility.
robert burton— Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 2. Subsect. 6.
What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?
— John Heywood, "Idleness" (circa 1576), as reproduced in Samuel Orchart Beeton and William Michael Rossetti, Encyclopaedia of English and American Poetry, Vol. 1 (1873), No. 400.
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)
His labor is a chant, His idleness a tune; Oh, for a bee's experience Of clovers and of noon!
— Emily Dickinson, Poems, XV. The Bee.
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.
— Sarah Bakewell, How to Live (2010), pp. 29-30
There is no more fatal obstacle to efficiency than the revelation that idleness has the same privileges as industry, and that for every additional blow with the pick or hammer an additional profit will be distributed among shareholders who wield neither.
— R. H. Tawney (1920) The Acquisitive Society. p.81
Saint-Simon leaves a legacy which affects all socialisms, for he introduces into social theory (he theme of idleness and parasitism as social problems consequent on the evasion of the central social responsibility ascribed to citizens: the duty to be productive .
— Peter Beilharz, in Labour's Utopias: Bolshevism, Fabianism, Social Democracy (1992).
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))
idleness is an appendix to nobility.
robert burton— Section 2, member 2, subsection 6. Immoderate Exercise a cause, and how. Solitariness, Idleness.
The invariable sign of doctrines invented by men is confusion, contradiction, absurdity, and obscenity idleness, theft, and viciousness dishonor your mother who in pain bore you.
mark rosenfelder— Some of the original tenets in Jippirasti, another Almean religion
idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
stanhope, philip, 4th earl of chesterfield— July 20, 1749.
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.
idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.
cesare pavese— Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living, 1938-12-10
