Indolence Quotes - Page 4

• Unless we realize our sins enough to call them by name, it is hardly worth while to say anything about them at all. When we pray for forgiveness, let us say, "my temper," or "untruthfulness," or "pride," "my selfishness, my cowardice, indolence, jealousy, revenge, impurity." To recognize our sins, we must look them in the face and call them by their right names, however hard. Honesty in confession calls for definiteness in confession.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Revenge, Honesty, Pride

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.

  Honore de Balzac

  Women, Passion, Europe

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• It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Revenge, Hate, Thinking

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• They who refuse education to a black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labor into a pendulum, necessity vibrating between poverty and indolence.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Black, Poverty

  Henry Ward Beecher (1887). “Patriotic Addresses in America and England from 1850 to 1885, on Slavery, the Civil War and the Development of Civil Liberty in the United States”

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• A giant as we hoped, in truth, a dwarf; A barrel of slop that shines on Lethe's wharf', Which at first seemed a vessel with sweet wine For thirsty lips. So down the swift decline You went through sloven spirit, craven heart And cynic indolence. And here the art Of molding clay has caught you for the nonce And made your shame our shame ~ Your head in bronze!

  Edgar Lee Masters

  Sweet, Art, Wine

  Edgar Lee Masters, “On A Bust”

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• Somewhere in the wide range of activity between the hard physical effort of wading for long hours against a swift current in a rocky stream, casting steadily, and the indolence of lying quietly in the sun waiting for a bobber to go under there is a type of angling to suit everyone's mood and everyone's pocketbook. Fishing is fishing wherever it is found... Angling's problems are never solved.

  Lee Wulff

  Lying, Lakes, Sea

  Lee Wulff (1989). “The compleat Lee Wulff: a treasury of Lee Wulff's greatest angling adventures”, Dutton Adult

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• Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.

  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

  Drinking, Drunk, Lazy

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• The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.

  Thomas Chalmers

  Ignorance, Light, Simplicity

  Thomas Chalmers (1836). “Works”, p.314

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• I have suffered, like other writers, from indolence, irresolution, distaste to my work, absence of 'inspiration,' and all that: but I have also found that sitting down, however reluctantly, with the pen in my hand, I have never worked for one quarter of an hour without finding myself in full train.

  Harriet Martineau

  Inspiration, Hands, Sitting Down

  Harriet Martineau (2006). “Autobiography”, p.156, Broadview Press

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• the most dangerous temptations are not due to the active, sudden flames of desire, 'the lusts of the flesh,' but to the disinclinations of the flesh, its indolence and sluggishness, our tendency to become creatures of habit.

  Sigrid Undset

  Flames, Temptation, Lust

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• Who conquers indolence conquers all other hereditary sins.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Sin, Conquer, Hereditary

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• The sluggard is a living insensible.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Insensible

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• Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reach, have from that time not only ceased to advance, and improve in their performances, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their principal, till they are reduced to beggary, and left without resources.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Men, Vanity, Gone

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• Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

  Benjamin Haydon

  Difficult

  Benjamin Robert Haydon, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1876). “Correspondence and Table-talk: With a Memoir”, p.270

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• The soul, like the body, acquires vigor by the exercise of all its faculties. In the midst of the world, in overcoming difficulties, in conquering selfishness, indolence, and fear--in all the occasions of duty, it employs, and reveals by employing, energies that render it efficient and robust--that broaden its scope, adjust its powers, and mature it with a rich experience.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Exercise, Soul, Selfishness

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• It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.

  W. H. Auden

  Stupid, Long, People

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• We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.

  Toni Morrison

  Passion, Leisure, Violence

  Toni Morrison (2014). “The Bluest Eye”, p.138, Random House

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• Flee sloth; for the indolence of the soul is the decay of the body.

  Cato the Younger

  Soul, Sloth, Decay

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• Moderation cannot have the credit of combatiug and subduing ambition, they are never found together. Moderation is the languor and indolence of the soul, as ambition is its activity and ardor.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Ambition, Soul, Together

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• We have more indolence in the mind than in the body.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mind, Body

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• To will the impossible is usually a sin of indolence.

  Fanny Lewald

  Laziness, Impossible, Sin

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• There is no doubt of the essential nobility of that man who pours into life the honest vigor of his toil, over those who compose the feathery foam of fashion that sweeps along Broadway; who consider the insignia of honor to consist in wealth and indolence; and who, ignoring the family history, paint coats of arms to cover up the leather aprons of their grandfathers.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Fashion, Men, Doubt

  "Humanity in the city". Book by Edwin Hubbell Chapin, 1854.

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• Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit no labor in its cause? I don't think so. All summations have a beginning, all effect has a story, all kindness beings with the sown seed. Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action. Be ignited or be gone.

  Mary Oliver

  Kindness, Thinking, Light

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• Human happiness seems to consist in three ingredients: action, pleasure and indolence.

  David Hume

  Happiness, Feelings, Three

  David Hume (1825). “Essays and treatises on several subjects: essays, moral, political and literary”, p.266

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• Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several--from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Spring, Ignorance, Vanity

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