Idle Quotes - Page 20

• Symbolism is no mere idle fancy or corrupt degeneration: it is inherent in the very texture of human life.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Life, Symbolism, Fancy

  Alfred North Whitehead (1985). “Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect”, p.61, Fordham Univ Press

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• Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ... Speech is too often ... the act of quite stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none to conceal ... Speech is of Time, silence is of Eternity ... It is idle to think that, by means of words, any real communication can ever pass from one man to another.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Fashion, Real, Communication

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• By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream

  Virginia Woolf

  Dream, Travel, Book

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.630, Wordsworth Editions

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• Useless, idle, exploitative male chauvinist drone!

  Sue Limb

  Males, Drones, Useless

  Sue Limb (2012). “Charming But Insane”, p.43, A&C Black

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• A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Book, Mind

  Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

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• There are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.

  Helen Schucman

  Thinking, Levels, Form

  Helen Schucman (2009). “A Course in Miracles”, p.49, Course in Miracles Society

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• Is it thy will, thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames and idle hours in me, The scope and tenor of thy jealousy? O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: It is my love that keeps mine eye awake: Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, To play the watchman ever for thy sake: For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others all too near.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Eye, Home

  William Shakespeare (1838). “The Pictorial edition of the works of Shakspere, ed. by C. Knight. [8 vols., including a vol. entitled William Shakspere, by C. Knight].”

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• Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

  Victor Hugo

  Depth, Substance, Useless

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.798, Modern Library

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• Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary, Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest, Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

  Walt Whitman

  Games, Looks, Arms

  Walt Whitman, Ezra Greenspan (2005). “Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition”, p.46, Psychology Press

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• I have seen good nurses and bad nurses. They existed along a continuum: from hard-working, kind and competent people, to office-hugging, bone-idle types, to apathetic, disengaged automatons.

  Jo Brand

  Hard Work, Nurse, People

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• After visiting several of America's most fashionable playgrounds, I have reached the conclusion that men who work hard enjoy life most. The men at such places can be divided into two classes, first, busy men of affairs ... and, second, rich loafers. I was impressed by the obvious enjoyment corporation heads and other important executives were deriving from their vacation activities.... The idle rich fellows, on the other hand, although indulging in exactly the same activities, palpably were bored.

  B. C. Forbes

  Hard Work, Men, Vacation

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• Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work.

  Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook

  Moving, Men, One Direction

  "Success". Book by Baron Max Aitken Beaverbrook, 1921.

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• There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.

  Theodosius Dobzhansky

  Technology, Long Ago, Doubt

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• How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were tobegin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Christian, Men, Long

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.516, Delphi Classics

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• Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle

  Charles Spurgeon

  Temptation, Industrious

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• This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour. (Autobiography, 1771)

  Benjamin Franklin

  Good Day, Men, Pork

  Benjamin Franklin (1986). “The Autobiography and Other Writings”, p.170, Penguin

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• Be not solitary, be not idle

  Robert Burton

  Solitary

  The Anatomy of Melancholy pt. 3, sec. 4 (1621 - 1651) See Samuel Johnson 97

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• A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar as we laugh together, you and I. In one form upon this earth, and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

  Rumi

  Love, Sweet, Stars

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.19, Lulu.com

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• If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Love, Peace, Growing Up

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.120, Courier Corporation

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• O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother; for Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.

  Ephrem the Syrian

  Brother, Art, Kings

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• Say “no” only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, “All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle."

  Gretchen Rubin

  Sleep, Parenting, Feet

  "Ten Ways To Be A More Light-Hearted Parent". www.huffingtonpost.com. May 17, 2019.

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• For a few brief days the orchards are white with blossoms. They soon turn to fruit, or else float away, useless and wasted, upon the idle breeze. So will it be with present feelings. They must be deepened into decision, or be entirely dissipated by delay.

  Theodore L. Cuyler

  White, Decision, Feelings

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 186), 1895.

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• Queens you must always be: queens to your lovers; queens to your husbands and your sons, queens of higher mystery to the world beyond. . . . But alas, you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Queens, Husband, Women

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• I do deeply deplore, of the sake of the cause, the prevalent notion, that the clergy must be had, either by persuasion or by bribery. They will not need persuasion or bribery, if their hearts are with us; if they are not, we are better without them. It is idle to suppose that the kingdom of heaven cannot come on earth, without their cooperation.

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Heart, Heaven, Feminism

  "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman" by Sarah Moore Grimke, Letter 15 (October 20, 1837), 1837.

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• Is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Men, Class, Numbers

  Gerda Lerner, Sarah Moore Grimké (1998). “The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimké”, p.89, Oxford University Press, USA

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