Samuel Johnson Quotes About Laziness

• It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sloth, Ease, Laziness

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.11

• Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

  Samuel Johnson

  Life, Retirement, Sorry

  On Jeremiah Markland, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 161, n. 3 (10 October 1782)

• If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

  Samuel Johnson

  Advice, Solitude, Sloth

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (letter to Boswell, 27 Oct. 1779)

• There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

  Samuel Johnson

  Business, Sloth, Laziness

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy, Francis Pearson Walesby (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D..: The Adventurer and Idler”, p.291

• Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Sloth, Calling

  Samuel Johnson, Francis Pearson Walesby, Arthur Murphy (1825). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: Reviews, politica. tracts, and lives of eminent persons”, p.285

• Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Laziness, Idle

  Samuel Johnson (1826). “The Rambler (1750-'52) a. the Idler (1758-'60)”

• Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Rags, Laziness, Appearance

  Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1825). “The Table Talk of Dr. Johnson: Comprising Opinions and Anecdotes of Life and Literature, Men, Manners, and Morals”, p.90

• Turn on the prudent
  Ant, thy heedful eyes,
  Observe her labours,
  Sluggard, and be wise.

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Eye, Laziness

  "The poems of Samuel Johnson".

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