Quotes About Idleness

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

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.

Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

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.

Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

Dreaming is a form of action. Idleness is a form of action. The idle man stares at the sky and sees what constitutes our eternal ceiling. The sky is one of the things that constructs us, one of our constants. But it is not what people believe. I should like to close this circle by turning over in my bed and scrutinizing the stars.

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness.

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

Surely nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason, than to resign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in dependence on the weather and the wind, for the only blessings which nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence. To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gaiety, or deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and the idolatry of folly.

I know of nothing that is so degenerating and so dangerous as idleness, for the brain will seek out mischief.

Grief is a species of idleness.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

In the matter of piety, poverty serves us better than wealth, and work better than idleness, especially since wealth becomes an obstacle even for those who do not devote themselves to it.

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.

A thought falls like a ripe fruit from the tree of idleness.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.

Boredom is a certain sign that we are allowing our faculties to rust in idleness.

Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

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.

Equality is. one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler--a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

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.

And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness!

I wonder at the idleness of tears.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. The debt habit is the twin brother of poverty.

Idleness induces caprice.

There is no curse equal to the curse of idleness. It destroys the man, the group, the people, or the nation who suffer under it.

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.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

I should like to know for what reason idleness is so popular with many young people that it is impossible to dissuade them from it either by words or by chastisements.