Indolence Quotes - Page 5

• There is a certain indolence in us, a wish not to be disturbed, which tempts us to think that when things are quiet, all is well. Subconsciously, we tend to give the preference to 'social peace,' though it be only apparent, because our lives and possessions seem then secure. Actually, human beings acquiesce too easily in evil conditions; they rebel far too little and too seldom. There is nothing noble about acquiescence in a cramped life or mere submission to superior force.

  A. J. Muste

  Thinking, Evil, Giving

  "The Essays of A. J. Muste (Pacifism and Class War)". Book edited by Nat Hentoff, 1967.

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics...For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.

  Polybius

  Children, War, Men

  21 Copy quote

• I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.

  Christian Wiman

  Writing, Discipline, World

  4 Copy quote

• I have not drawn a very rosy picture of the magician. I did not intend to do so. To the novice entering the life and promising himself ease, indolence, and wealth, I should say, Don't!

  Alexander Herrmann

  Entering, Novices, Ease

  6 Copy quote

• There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Summer, Reading, Mind

  Henry Ward Beecher (1862). “Eyes and Ears”, p.190

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.

  John Ruskin

  Work, Self, Toil

  4 Copy quote

• This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Flower, Men, Bird

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.73, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence.

  Tacitus

  Men, Fame, Industry

  "Annales". Book by Tacitus, XVI. 18, AD 117.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pain, indolence, sterility, endless ennui have also their lesson for you, if you are great.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pain, Suffering, Lessons

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.203, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the great tragedies we witness almost daily is the tragedy of men of high aim and low achievement. Their motives are noble. Their proclaimed ambition is praiseworthy. Their capacity to achieve is great. But their discipline is weak. They succumb to indolence. Appetite robs them of will.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Ambition, Men, Discipline

  10 Copy quote

• It is not new for the older generation to bewail the indolence of the young, and there is a tendency for the latter to maintain much of the older ethic screened by a new semantics and an altered ideology.

  David Riesman

  Generations, Ethics, Tendencies

  David Riesman (1964). “Abundance for What?”, p.177, Transaction Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Patience and submission are very carefully to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence. We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle; for the calamities of life, like the necessities of Nature, are calls to labor and diligence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Patience, Struggle, May

  Samuel Johnson (1811). “Works”, p.184

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The love of indolence is universal, or next to it.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Laziness, Next, Universal

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1835). “Specimens of the Table Talk of the Late Samuel Taylor Coleridge: In Two Volumes”, p.190

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Injustice arises either from precipitation, or indolence, or from a mixture of both. - The rapid and slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Long, Waiting, Mixtures

  7 Copy quote

• When leisure is a selfish luxury, its very activity, when it stirs, is apt to be only a kind of indolence taking exercise, that it may the better digest its selfishness.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Selfish, Exercise, Luxury

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.39

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the mind is wearied by study, or the body worn with sickness, It is well to lie fallow for a while, in the vacancy of sheer amusement; But when thou prosprest in health, and thine intellect can soar untired, To seek uninstructive pleasure is to slumber on the couch of indolence.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Lying, Mind, Vacancy

  "Proverbial Philosophy (Of Recreation)". Book by Martin Farquhar Tupper, 1839.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy, hate cant, hate indolence, oppression, injustice; hate Pharisaism; hate them as Christ hated them with a deep, living, godlike hatred.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Hate, Hypocrisy, Hatred

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 298, 1895.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Broad-minded is just another way of saying a fellow is too lazy to form an opinion.

  Will Rogers

  Funny, Lazy, Sloth

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.

  Jean Cocteau

  Believe, Fall, Inspiration

  11 Copy quote

• It is notorious that, whenever the demand for labor is much greater than the supply, or the wages of labor are much higher than the expenses of living, very many, even on the ordinary laboring class, are remarkable for indolence, and work no more than compelled by necessity.

  Edmund Ruffin

  War, Class, Ordinary

  15 Copy quote

• What is public opinion? It is private indolence.

  Georg Brandes

  Public Opinion, Opinion

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.5, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man governs himself by the dictates of virtue and good sense, who acts without zeal or passion in points that are of no consequence; but when the whole community is shaken, and the safety of the public endangered, the appearance of a philosophical or an affected indolence must arise either from stupidity or perfidiousness.

  Joseph Addison

  Philosophical, Passion, Men

  Joseph Addison (1854). “The Works of [the Right Honourable] Joseph Addison: The Spectator, no. 483-600. The Guardian. The lover. The present state of the war. The late trial and cenviction of Count Tariff. The Whig-examiner. The Freeholder, no. 1-30”, p.449

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mind changes often ... People who have no mind can easily be steadfast and firm, but when a man is loaded down to the guards with it, as I am, every heavy sea of foreboding or inclination, maybe of indolence, shifts the cargo.

  Mark Twain

  Men, Sea, People

  6 Copy quote

• Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

  Edward Abbey

  Passion, Speak, Melancholy

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.26, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it. They are more or less unfit for liberty; and although it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it

  John Stuart Mill

  Government, Long, People

  "Considerations on Representative Government". Book by John Stuart Mill (p. 6), 1861.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source