Doing Nothing Quotes - Page 11

• At a certain point the family moved to Jaipur, where no woman could avoid the doli or purdah. They kept her in the house from morning to night, either cooking or doing nothing. [My mother] hated doing nothing, she hated to cook. So she became pale and ill, and far from being concerned about her health, my grandfather said, 'Who's going to marry her now?' So my grandmother waited for my grandfather to go out, and then she dressed my mother as a man and let her go out riding with her brothers.

  Indira Gandhi

  Mother, Morning, Brother

  Interview With Oriana Fallaci, sangam.org. December 24, 2014.

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• I am not good at aligning myself with any movement that comes along but also I don't like the thought of sitting back and doing nothing.

  Vashti Bunyan

  Sitting, Movement

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.

  Noah Baumbach

  Responsibility, Years, Adults

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• Perhaps I overemphasized the value of keeping busy.... I liked to imagine that I was incapable of doing nothing for afternoons myself, but maybe what disturbed me was that I was capable of it. I feared this was a knack one could get the hang of rather readily, and it was therefore now lurking in my house waiting for me to pick it up like a winter flu.

  Lionel Shriver

  Winter, Waiting, House

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• If you want freedom you have to come to terms with being okay in the now doing nothing.

  Doug Duncan

  Want, Term, Okay

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• I love working. I feel guilty about doing nothing; I get bored.

  Nick Frost

  Bored, Guilty, Feels

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• blackmail. The age-old path to the land of milk and honey. The one sure way of being paid for doing nothing.

  Ursula Curtiss

  Milk And Honey, Land, Age

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• Holidays are also an opportunity for kids to unlearn every good habit they've learned during the rest of the year. They don't go to school. They get to stay up past their bedtime. They get candy and presents for doing nothing. Childhood utopia.

  Jim Gaffigan

  School, Holiday, Kids

  Jim Gaffigan (2013). “Dad Is Fat”, p.222, Crown Archetype

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• If I kept my mouth shut, because I can make millions, that isn't doing nothing.

  Muhammad Ali

  Mouths, Because I Can, Ifs

  "Parkinson" with Michael Parkinson, www.mirror.co.uk. 1971.

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• The American people want jobs and economic growth. Congress is doing nothing to provide that. The American people want their constitutional liberties protected. Congress is doing nothing to provide that.

  Ted Cruz

  Jobs, People, Growth

  "Sen. Cruz: IMF provision shouldn't have been in Ukraine bill". "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, www.foxnews.com. March 25, 2014.

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• But it's also true that my memory is a card shark, reshuffling the deck to hide what I fear to know, unable to keep from fingering the ace at the bottom of the deck even when I'm doing nothing more than playing Fish in the daylight with children.

  Lorene Cary

  Memories, Children, Sharks

  Lorene Cary (2010). “Black Ice”, p.127, Vintage

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• Is there anything so wretched as to look at a man of fine abilities doing nothing?

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Looks, Fine

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• We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Regret, Home, Giving

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• Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing
  with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring
  with replacing the noun. It is doing that always
  doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that.
  Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and
  pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is
  what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no
  matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a
  great many kinds of poetry.

  Gertrude Stein

  Poetry, Doe, Nouns

  Gertrude Stein (1998). “Writings, 1903-1932: Q.E.D., Three lives, Portraits and other short works, The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

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• ... the will always wills to do something and thus implicitly holds in contempt sheer thinking, whose whole activity depends on "doing nothing.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thoughtful, Thinking, Action

  Hannah Arendt (1978). “Willing”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• Love women! I hate feminism. "Hate" may be an accurate word, but too strong to use. I strongly oppose feminism because it's nothing but liberalism, and it's doing nothing to actually advance women. It's doing just the exact opposite.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Strong, Hate, Opposites

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• My heart's in stage. Making Quadrophenia was exciting because we were riding around on scooters with no crash helmets. But "hurry up and wait" is the anthem of films. Everybody wants you ready, and then you sit doing nothing.

  Phil Daniels

  Heart, Waiting, Riding

  "Portrait of the artist: Phil Daniels, actor". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. August 29, 2011.

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• Only those who do not expect anything are never disappointed. Only those who never try, never fail. Anyone who is currently achieving anything in life is simultaneously risking failure. It is always better to fail in doing something than to excel in doing nothing. A flawed diamond is more valuable than a perfect brick. People who have no failures also have few victories.

  John Landis Mason

  People, Perfect, Victory

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• Doing something, however pathetic, is psychologically better than doing nothing. In the current political environment - that is, with no more Cold War tensions - the tendency is to counteract the feelings of fear and vulnerability with a variety of military, paramilitary and police measures, despite the reality that this kind of excessive reliance on force in many ways intensifies the very problem it is purporting to solve.

  Richard A. Falk

  Military, War, Reality

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I like to relax. Spend it with people that I've grown up with, or people that I care about, and just relax, sit around doing nothing or sitting on a beach.

  Jason Statham

  Beach, People, Relax

  Source: collider.com

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• It's amazing how much time one can spend in a garden doing nothing at all. I sometimes think, in fact, that the nicest part of gardening is walking around in a daze, idly deadheading the odd dahlia, wondering where on earth to squeeze in yet another impulse buy, debating whether to move the recalcitrant artemisia one more time, or daydreaming about where to put the pergola.

  Jane Garmey

  Dream, Time, Moving

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• It is in bed that we learn to bear the inevitable. We are learning this all the time while we lie with our face turned to the wall thinking we are doing nothing.

  J. E. Buckrose

  Wall, Lying, Thinking

  Annie Edith Foster Jameson, J. E. Buckrose (1923). “What I Have Gathered”

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• I can't imagine deer hunting. I used to think I couldn't imagine deer hunting because killing a deer seemed so awful. But now I think about just sitting in a tree and doing nothing all day and probably not even seeing a deer. Not moving and sitting in a tree? That seems rough.

  Joel Stein

  Moving, Thinking, Hunting

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I've just been livin' a normal life, going shopping, going out, gettin' pissed. I keep sitting on my arse doing nothing.

  Lady Sovereign

  Shopping, Arses, Going Out

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Most baby books also tend to romanticize the mother who stays at home, as if she really spends her entire day doing nothing but beaming at the baby and whipping up educational toys from pieces of string, rather than balancing cooing time with laundry, cleaning, shopping and cooking.

  Susan Chira

  Mother, Baby, Educational

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