Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Idleness

• To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Money, Done, Idle

• The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ignorance, Simplicity, Savages

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.113, David M Gross

• This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Men, Bird

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.73, Courier Corporation

• My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Yesterday, Bird

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constantand imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Yield, Hands, Moral

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Sloth, Monsters

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1786, Delphi Classics

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