Idleness Quotes - Page 14

• The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books

  Robertson Davies

  Book, Pleasure, Live By

  Robertson Davies (2008). “Selected Works on the Pleasures of Reading”, Penguin Group Canada

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• We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary.

  Agatha Christie

  Simple, Achievement, Great Inventions

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• Our youth must be steadfast and take advantage of the benefits of modern civilization. Do not fall prey to idleness for it shall be a curse to you and to succeeding generations. You must set yourselves us as examples of determination and hard work. Plan your time and use both your physical and mental powers purposefully and productively.

  Haile Selassie

  Determination, Fall, Hard Work

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• Timing is everything. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely to go in the world. The popular notion is that a youth's progress depends upon how he acts during his working hours. It doesn't. It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure...If he spends it in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be about all. If he diligently utilizes his own time...to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the greater responsibilities - and greater rewards - are almost certain to come to him.

  B. C. Forbes

  Time, Responsibility, Men

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• In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasure

  George Eliot

  Travel, Shapes, Fool

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.4069, Delphi Classics

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• Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Love, Busy, Indolence

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• The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs, Losing both beauty and utility.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Green, Docks

  'Henry V' (1599) act 5, sc. 2, l. 44

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• No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Effort, Littles

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1857). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.133

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• There is no law by which to determine the superiority of nations; hence the vanity of the claim, and the idleness of disputes about it. A people risen, run their race, and die either of themselves or at the hands of another, who, succeeding to their power, take possession of their place, and upon their monuments write new names; such is history.

  Lew Wallace

  Running, Writing, Vanity

  "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ".

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• I wonder at the idleness of tears.

  Lizette Woodworth Reese

  Tears, Wonder

  Lizette Woodworth Reese (1928). “Lizette Woodworth Reese ...”

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• Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger.

  Mason Cooley

  Anger, People, Stalwart

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• He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, / And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

  John Keats

  Thinking, Indolence, Awake

  John Keats (2015). “John Keats - The Man Behind The Lyrics: Life, letters, and literary remains: Complete Letters and Two Extensive Biographies of one of the most beloved English Romantic poets”, p.440, e-artnow

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• There is not a thing on the face of the earth that I abhor so much as idleness or idle people.

  George Whitefield

  People, Earth, Faces

  John Gillies, George Whitefield (1839). “Memoirs of Rev. George Whitefield”, p.579

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• It is not necessary for a man to be actively bad in order to make a failure in life; simple inaction will accomplish it. Nature has everywhere written her protest against idleness; everything which ceases to struggle toward an ideal, the constant effort to get higher and further, which develops manhood and character.

  James Terry White

  Struggle, Character, Simple

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• Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction; the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness.

  William Beveridge

  Ignorance, Desire, Disease

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• In effort Happiness idleness life pleasure superstition support trouble work The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be.

  Arthur Balfour

  Life, Real, Work

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• Love labour: for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayest for physique. It is wholesome for the body, and good for the mind. It prevents the fruits of idleness, which many times come of nothing to do, and leads many to do what is worse than nothing.

  William Penn

  Mind, Body, Want

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• Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Wise, Lying, Wife

  1881 Virginibus Puerisque,'Virginibus Puerisque', pt.2.

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• Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.

  Josef Pieper

  Self, Opposites, Age

  "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" by Josef Pieper, translated by Gerald Malsbary, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, (p. 27), 1998.

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• Give me to live with Love alone And let the world go dine and dress; For Love hath lowly haunts... If life's a flower, I choose my own 'T is "love in Idleness".

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Flower, Giving, Dresses

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• We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium... These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness... These are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Evil, Employment

  Thomas Jefferson (1853). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.516

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• There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.

  Samuel Johnson

  Agitation, Imagine, Appearance

  Samuel Johnson (1801). “Idler”, p.191

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• No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Work, Numbers

  Abraham Lincoln, Terence Ball (2013). “Lincoln: Political Writings and Speeches”, p.238, Cambridge University Press

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• In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.

  John Ruskin

  Care, Noble, Holy

  John Ruskin (1867). “Precious Thoughts: Moral and Religious. Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A. M.”, p.302

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• Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food--and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Love, War, Passion

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