Idle Quotes - Page 16

• In times like ours, where the growing complexity of life leaves us barely the time to read the newspapers, where the map of Europehas endured profound rearrangements and is perhaps on the brink of enduring yet others, where so many threatening and new problems appear everywhere, you will admit it may be demanded of a writer that he be more than a fine wit who makes us forget in idle and byzantine discussions on the merits of pure form.

  Marcel Proust

  Art, Profound, Byzantine

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• Miss Erstwhile: “It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat.” Mr. Nobley: “And yet you chat away.

  Shannon Hale

  Exercise, Missing, Relief

  Shannon Hale (2007). “Austenland: A Novel”, Bloomsbury USA

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• It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

  Patrick Henry

  Life, Sweet, Peace

  Speech in Virginia Convention, Richmond, Va., 23 Mar. 1775.

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• Sorry about Bender," Lula said, letting the Trans Am idle at the curb. "Maybe we could tell Vinnie he died. We could say we were all set to bring Bender in, and he died. Bang. Dead as a doorknob." "Better yet, why don't we just go back and kill him," I said. I opened the door to leave, caught my toe in the floor mat, and fell out of the car, face first. I rolled onto my back and stared up at the stars. "I'm fine," I said to Lula. "Maybe I'll sleep here tonight.

  Janet Evanovich

  Stars, Sorry, Sleep

  Janet Evanovich (2010). “Hard Eight: A Stephanie Plum Novel”, p.111, Macmillan

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• To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Memories, Dark, Hysteria

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• The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; Contrariwise, a diamond splits The prospect into idle bits That none can piece together.

  Robert Graves

  Eye, Sea, Sky

  Robert Graves (1972). “Poems”, Penguin Books Ltd

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• The creative genius begins in the idle moment, dreaming up the impossible, and later making it come true.

  Virginia C. Andrews

  Dream, Creative, Genius

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• I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split.

  Raymond Chandler

  Onions, Splits, Pearls

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.92, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. He ought to chase them out, sweep the premises clean. But he does not care to do so, or does not care enough"(72).

  J. M. Coetzee

  Mind, Doe, Care

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Disgrace”, p.72, Random House

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• Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
  In late December before the fire's daze
  Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

  Allen Tate

  Christmas, Hands, Fire

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.103, Macmillan

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• We do not rest satisfied with the present.... So imprudent we are that we wander in the times which are not ours and do not thinkof the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us.

  Blaise Pascal

  Dream, Hope, Painful

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.64, Cosimo, Inc.

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• When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon than whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Real, Heart, Desire

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• People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

  Thomas Sowell

  Hurt, Children, People

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• Curiosity is idle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable thing.

  James Harvey Robinson

  Curiosity, May, Realizing

  James Harvey Robinson (1939). “The Mind in the Making”

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• An idle head is a boxe for the winde.

  George Herbert

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.312

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• Even when someone battles hard, there is an equal portion for one who lingers behind, and in the same honor are held both the coward and the brave man; the idle man and he who has done much meet death alike.

  Homer

  Men, Brave, Honor

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• Letterwriting is the natural outlet of the "odds." The busy-bodies, the idle, the perverted, the cranks, the feel-it-my-duties ... Also the plain depraved. They all write letters. It's their safe outlet, you see. They can be as interfering, as long-winded, as obscene, as pompous, as one-idea'd, as they like on paper, and no one can kick them for it. So they write. My God, how they write!

  Josephine Tey

  Writing, Odds, Ideas

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• The idle man stands outside of God's plan, outside of the ordained scheme of things; and the truest self-respect, the noblest independence, and the most genuine dignity, are not to be found there.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Self, Independence

  J. G. HOLLAND (1866). “PLAIN TALKS ON FAMILIAR SUBJECTS”, p.111

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• There is really nothing left to a genuine idle man, who possesses any considerable degree of vital power, but sin.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Degrees, Sin

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• Poor dusky children of slavery, men and women of my own race-the transition from slavery to freedom was too sudden for you! The bright dreams were too rudely dispelled; you were not prepared for the new life that opened before you, and the great masses of the North learned to look upon your helplessness with indifference-learned to speak of you as an idle, dependent race. Reason should have prompted kinder thoughts. Charity is ever kind.

  Elizabeth Keckley

  Dream, Children, Men

  Elizabeth Keckley (2016). “Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House”, p.52, Enhanced Media Publishing

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• In my opinion what distinguishes the Bible from the other books is its sense of time. Its first concern is to establish a calendar. Then it traces a genealogy. It imposes rhythms, it orders, it operates, it does not abandon the earth where its destiny must be fulfilled and whose own destiny must be fulfilled by it. Its history will be that of men and not of idle gods. The whole spirit must become incarnate and explore the possible.

  Adrienne Monnier

  Bible, Book, Destiny

  Adrienne Monnier (1976). “The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier”, p.376, U of Nebraska Press

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• It is idle to dispute with old men. Their opinions, like their cranial sutures, are ossified.

  Santiago Ramon y Cajal

  Men, Opinion, Disputes

  Charlas de Cafe

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• You must elect your work; you shall take what your brains can, and drop all the rest. Only so can that amount of vital force accumulate which can make the step from knowing to doing. No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken. It is a step out of a chalk circle of imbecility into fruitfulness.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Taken, Men, Circles

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.339

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• An absolute monarch, who is rich without patrimony, may be charitable without merit; and Constantine too easily believed that he should purchase the favour of Heaven if he maintained the idle at the expense of the industrious, and distributed among the saints the wealth of the republic.

  Edward Gibbon

  History, Heaven, Saint

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.388, Wordsworth Editions

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• These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valour.

  Edward Gibbon

  Law, Safety, History

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.600, Wordsworth Editions

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