Idle Quotes - Page 14

• I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

  Mary Oliver

  Prayer, Blessed, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2008). “The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays”, p.65, Beacon Press

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• ... do not listen to vain and empty talk, in which the majority of world-loving people spend their time, and do not take pleasure in it. For the law says: 'You shall not raise false reports' (Ex. 23:1). Solomon says: 'Remove far from me vanity and lies' (Prov. 30:8). The Lord said: 'But I say to you, every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment' (Mt. 12:36).

  Lorenzo Scupoli

  Christian, Lying, Men

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• God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Spiritual, Struggle, Heart

  "Pearls of Wisdom". Book by Swami Vivekananda, edited by the Ramakrishna Mission, 2010.

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• I give the name violence to a boldness lying idle and enamored of danger.

  Jean Genet

  Lying, Names, Giving

  Jean Genet, Edmund White (1993). “The selected writings of Jean Genet”, Ecco Pr

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• Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

  Will Self

  Philosophy, Writing, Creativity

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• Hunger is an altogether fit companion for the idle man.

  Hesiod

  Work, Men, Hunger

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• There are three sorts of pleasures which are advantageous, and three which are injurious. Finding pleasure in the discriminating study of ceremonies and music, finding pleasure in discussing the good points in the conduct of others, and finding pleasure in having many wise friends, these are advantageous. But finding pleasure in profligate enjoyments, finding pleasure in idle gadding about, and finding pleasure in feasting, these are injurious.

  Confucius

  Friendship, Wise, Three

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• The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Events, Libertarian

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• He was met even now As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Flower, Sea

  William Shakespeare (1866). “The Works of William Shakespeare”, p.376

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• If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle - and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.

  Michael Merzenich

  Brain, Age, Watches

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• Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

  Mary Schmich

  Real, Worry, Tuesday

  Mary Schmich (2012). “The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Chicago Tribune's Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary”, p.31, Agate Digital

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• Woody is the guy who made me want to be a comic. I was in heaven and couldn't stop smiling because he was my idle and 29 years after seeing Take the Money and Run, I was working for him.

  Jon Lovitz

  Smile, Running, Years

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• No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober.

  Samuel Smiles

  Law, Sober, Industrious

  Samuel Smiles (2009). “Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct”, p.5, The Floating Press

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• Anyone who refuses to marry is shrinking his farmwork, wasting the seed, and leaving idle the appropiate tools created by God; he sins against the purpose of creation and wisdom visible in the evidence of natural structure. The man who refuses to marry has severed a chain of being, a previously unbroken chain linking his own existence to that of Adam.

  Al-Ghazali

  Wisdom, Islamic, Men

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• We cannot afford to be idle, and though weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them.

  Robert E. Lee

  Military, War, Men

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• The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear.

  Warren Buffett

  Real, Rap, Men

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• Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power and should not be at all your concerns.

  Epictetus

  Silly, Reflection, Achievement

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• God, I pray light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for thee.

  Jim Elliot

  Light, May, Sticks

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• On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.

  Nipsey Hussle

  Worst Enemy, Missions, Idle Time

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• And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.... And as to you corpse, I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweet-scented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips — I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

  Walt Whitman

  Death, Sweet, Thinking

  Walt Whitman, “Song Of Myself, XLIX”

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• This is the perpetual and pitiful tragedy of the practical man in practical affairs. He always begins with a flourish of contempt for what he calls theorizing and what people who can do it call thinking. He will not wait for logic-that is, in the most exact sense, he will not listen to reason. It will therefore appear to him an idle and ineffectual proceeding to say that there is a reason for his present failure. Nevertheless, it may be well to say it, and to try and make it clear even to him.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Wisdom, Men, Thinking

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• Dreaming is a form of action. Idleness is a form of action. The idle man stares at the sky and sees what constitutes our eternal ceiling. The sky is one of the things that constructs us, one of our constants. But it is not what people believe. I should like to close this circle by turning over in my bed and scrutinizing the stars.

  Philippe Starck

  Dream, Stars, Believe

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• She believed, and was entitled to believe, I must say, that all human beings were evil by nature, whether tormentors or victims, or idle standers-by. They could only create meaningless tragedies, she said, since they weren't nearly intelligent enough to accomplish all the good they were meant to do.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Believe, Intelligent, Evil

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• We Indians are Latin America's moral reserve. We act according to a universal law that consists of three basic principles: do not steal, do not lie and do not be idle.

  Evo Morales

  Lying, Latin, Law

  "'Capitalism Has Only Hurt Latin America'". Interview with Jens Glüsing, Hans Hoyng, www.spiegel.de. August 28, 2006.

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• I want to know which idea you're going to kill yourself trying to make successful, not which ideas have crossed your idle mind.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Successful, Ideas, Mind

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