Leisure Quotes - Page 28

• The sooner the world solves its economic problems, the sooner its inhabitants can afford leisure and peace and get on with the non-material things that are inherently important: the work of mind and spirit that is gloriously and uniquely human, the work that no machine can ever do.

  Louis O. Kelso

  Wisdom, Mind, Important

  Louis O. Kelso, Patricia Hetter Kelso (1967). “Two-factor Theory: the Economics of Reality; how to Turn Eighty Million Workers Into Capitalists on Borrowed Money, and Other Proposals”, New York : Vintage Books

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• The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Class, Long

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.130, Courier Corporation

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• The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Class, Transition, Habit

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.7, e-artnow

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• The early ascendancy of leisure as a means of reputability is traceable to the archaic distinction between noble and ignoble employments. Leisure is honourable and becomes imperative partly because it shows exemption from ignoble labour.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mean, Employment, Noble

  Thorstein Veblen (2012). “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, p.64, Courier Corporation

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• "War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.

  Edmund Burke

  Peace, War, Military

  "A Vindication of Natural Society". Book by Edmund Burke, 1756.

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• Not a single thought managed to take shape in her mind: for the likeness of this day to the last seemed to her the clearest proof that it would be another quite useless day, a day she would gladly have done without. For a moment she thought that a day like this would be pointless for anyone on earth, then abruptly changed her mind as she realised that thousands of women, after a hard week's work, or a family quarrel, or even just after catching a cold, would envy her just for having the leisure to rest in comfort.

  Ismail Kadaré

  Days Like This, Envy, Mind

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• It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

  Hans Hofmann

  Spiritual, Art, Self

  "Search for the Real: And Other Essays". Book by Hans Hofmann. "Painting and Culture", p. 56, 1948.

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• A wedding in haste is worth two at leisure.

  Gelett Burgess

  Two, Haste

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• All his leisure clothes were absurd - jokes, really - as though leisure itself had to be ridiculed.

  Edmund White

  Clothes, Absurd, Jokes

  Edmund White (2016). “A Boy's Own Story: Picador Classic”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

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• Your job today tells me nothing of your future--your use of your leisure today tells me just what your tomorrow will be.

  Robert H. Jackson

  Jobs, Use, Today

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• Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Learning, Waiting, Mind

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• Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes.

  Plato

  Hero, Stories, Storytelling

  Plato (2016). “The Republic”, p.259, Xist Publishing

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• What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?

  Bertrand Russell

  Use, Remember, Conquest

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.22, Routledge

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• She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?

  Ian Mcewan

  Reading, Book, Home

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• The purpose of learning to employ every minute properly is to unclutter our hours, deliver us of feverish activity and earn us true leisure.

  Robert Updegraff

  Learning, Purpose, Hours

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• Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

  Winston Churchill

  Friendship, Book, Writing

  Sir Winston Churchill (1948). “The Second World War: The gathering storm”, Houghton Mifflin Company

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• And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain. Therefore, Farewell.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Farewell, Topics

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• Detest it as lewd intercourse, it can deprive you of all your leisure, your health, your rest, and the whole happiness of your life.
  Having himself spent a lifetime unsuccessfully trying to prove Euclid's postulate that parallel lines do not meet, Farkas discouraged his son János from any further attempt.

  Farkas Bolyai

  Life, Son, Science

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• The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing.

  J. K. Rowling

  Book, Skulls, Mind

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• I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I’d like to keep living with someone — maybe even a man — and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Writing, Men, Museums

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• It is generally recognized that creativity requires leisure, an absence of rush, time for the mind and imagination to float and wander and roam, time for the individual to descend into the depths of his or her psyche, to be available to barely audible signals rustling for attention. Long periods of time may pass in which nothing seems to be happening. But we know that kind of space must be created if the mind is to leap out of its accustomed ruts, to part from the mechanical, the known, the familiar, the standard, and generate a leap into the new.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Creativity, Space, Imagination

  Nathaniel Branden (2008). “The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age”, p.150, Penguin

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• Art matters. It is not simply a leisure activity for the privileged or a hobby for the eccentric. It is a practical good for the world. The work of the artist is an expression of hope - it is homage to the value of human life, and it is vital to society. Art is a sacred expression of human creativity that shares the same ontological ground as all human work. Art, along with all work is the ordering of creation toward the intention of the creator.

  Michael Gungor

  Art, Creativity, Leisure Activities

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• Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Suffering, Idlers, Action

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• The difficulty of carrying on a leisure-oriented tradition of culture in a work-oriented society is enough in itself to keep the present crisis in our culture unresolved.

  Clement Greenberg

  Culture, Carrying On, Tradition

  Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.32, Beacon Press

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• Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure

  Witold Rybczynski

  Eye, Television Watching, Ears

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