Leisure Quotes - Page 12

• I'm up and down and round about, Yet all the world can't find me out; Though hundreds have employed their leisure, They never yet could find my measure.

  Jonathan Swift

  Circles, World, Down And

  Jonathan Swift (1823). “The select works of Jonathan Swift ...: containing the whole of his poetical works ... embellished with engravings”, p.237

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• 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

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• Marry in haste, repent at leisure.

  Walter Scott

  Haste, Repent

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• The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.

  John Dewey

  Responsibility, Practice, Rewards

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education”, p.264, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its "still small voice" amid rural leisure and placid retirement. But perhaps the knowledge which causeth not to err is most frequently impressed upon the mind during the season of affliction.

  Walter Scott

  Retirement, Vanity, Voice

  sir Walter Scott (bart [novels, collected]) (1842). “Waverley novels. (Abbotsford ed.).”, p.227

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• Unless you're fond of hollering you don't make great conversations on a running cycle. Instead you spend your time being aware of things and meditating on them. On sights and sounds, on the mood of the weather and things remembered, on the machine and the countryside you're in, thinking about things at great leisure and length without being hurried and without feeling you're losing time.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Running, Thinking, Sight

  Robert M. Pirsig (2009). “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values”, p.8, Harper Collins

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• Unfortunately, once an economy is geared to expansion, the means rapidly turn into an end and "the going becomes the goal." Even more unfortunately, the industries that are favored by such expansion must, to maintain their output, be devoted to goods that are readily consumable either by their nature, or because they are so shoddily fabricated that they must soon be replaced. By fashion and built-in obsolescence the economies of machine production, instead of producing leisure and durable wealth, are duly cancelled out by the mandatory consumption on an even larger scale.

  Lewis Mumford

  Fashion, Mean, Goal

  LEWIS MUMFORD (1961). “THE CITY IN HISTORY”

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• If there be one attribute of the Deity which astonishes me more than another, it is the attribute of patience. The Great Soul that sits on the throne of the universe is not, never was, and never will be, in a hurry. In the realm of nature, every thing has been wrought out in the august consciousness of infinite leisure; and I bless God for that geology which gives me a key to the patience in which the creative process was effected.

  J. G. Holland

  Keys, August, Giving

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• Turn your churches into halls of science, and devote your leisure day to the study of your own bodies, the analysis of your own minds, and the examination of the fair material world which extends around you!

  Frances Wright

  Mind, Church, Analysis

  Frances Wright (1829). “Course of popular lectures; with 3 addresses on various public occasions, and a reply to the charges against the French reformers of 1789”, p.46

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• Many concerns now make part or the whole of their dividends from by-products that formerly went to waste. How do we, as individuals, utilize our principal by-product? Our principal by-product is, of course, our leisure time. Many years of observation forces the conclusion that a man's success or failure in life is determined as much by how he acts during his leisure as by how he acts during his work hours. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how he is likely to spend the latter part of his life.

  B. C. Forbes

  Men, Years, Waste

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• Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Wings, Space

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1283, Delphi Classics

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• The man who works 52 weeks in the year does not do his best in any one week of the year, Daniel Guggenheim, onetime head of the greatest smelting and mining family in America, impressed upon me. Real recreation quickens aspiration. The true purpose of recreation is not merely to amuse, not merely to afford pleasure, not merely to kill time, but to increase our fitness, enhance our usefulness, spur achievement.

  B. C. Forbes

  Real, Men, Years

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• To be entirely at leisure for one day is to be for one day an immortal

  Jan Struther

  One Day, Immortal

  Jan Struther (1940). “Mrs. Miniver”

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• Loafing" is easy, but "leisure" is difficult.

  Peter Drucker

  Easy, Difficult, Loafing

  Peter Drucker (2013). “People and Performance”, p.238, Routledge

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• In spite of recent jazzed-up one-day matches, cricket to be fully appreciated demands leisure, some sunny warm days and an understanding of its finer points.

  J. B. Priestley

  Understanding, One Day, Demand

  "The English". Book by J. B. Priestley, 1973.

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• [T]hroughout the ages to be educated meant to be unproductive.... our word "school" - and its equivalent in all European languages - derives from a Greek word meaning "leisure.

  Peter Drucker

  School, Greek, Age

  Peter F. Drucker (2011). “Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New”, p.115, Transaction Publishers

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• Thoughts come maimed and plucked of plumage from the lips, which, from the pea, in the silence of your own leisure and study, would be born with far more beauty.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Silence, Would Be, Lips

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• Epaminondas is reported wittily to have said of a good man that died about the time of the battle of Leuctra, "How came he to have so much leisure as to die, when there was so much stirring?

  Plutarch

  Men, Good Man, Battle

  Plutarch (1909). “Plutarch's Lives and Writings”

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• ... social roles vary in the extent to which it is culturally permissible to express ambivalence or negative feelings toward them.Ambivalence can be admitted most readily toward those roles that are optional, least where they are considered primary. Thus men repress negative feelings toward work and feel freer to express negative feelings toward leisure, sex and marriage, while women are free to express negative feelings toward work but tend to repress them toward family roles.

  Alice S Rossi

  Sex, Men, Feelings

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• You can speed up your life if you want to - that's easy. Winding down is what's hard.

  Jennifer James

  Want, Speed, Easy

  Jennifer James (1987). “Windows”, Newmarket Press

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• The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Retirement, Students

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.33, Cosimo, Inc.

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• This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Work, Night

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.408, Simon and Schuster

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• John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have his talk out as I do.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Legs, Hours

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 3, p. 230 (31 March 1778)

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• In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are halfconcealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends.... We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Heart, Winter, Doors

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• Good-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mind, States, Good Humor

  Samuel Johnson (1990). “The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson: The Rambler”

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