Popular quotes about Leisure! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
We should abolish 'work.' By that I mean abolishing the distinction between work and leisure, one of the greatest mistakes of the last century, one that enables employers to keep workers in lousy jobs by granting them some leisure time.
Theodore ZeldinLeisure is the time for doing something useful. This leisure the diligent person will obtain the lazy one never.
Benjamin FranklinMany 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. ForbesWork is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.
Elisabeth ElliotThe White House is defending President Obama's sports activities over the past week, saying that everyone needs leisure time. Thanks to these economic policies, 9.5 percent of Americans have all the leisure time they need.
Jay LenoThe leisure class is one in which individuals have sufficient economic security and sufficient leisure to find opportunity for a variety of satisfactions in life.
Eleanor RooseveltThere can be no education without leisure; and without leisure, education is worthless.
Sarah Josepha HaleThe right use of leisure is no doubt a harder problem than the right use of our working hours. The soul is dyed the color of its leisure thoughts.
William Ralph IngeIf man is to be liberated to enjoy more leisure, he must also be prepared to enjoy this leisure fully and creatively.
Eleanor Rooseveltall pleasures should be taken in great leisure and are worth going into in detail; love is not like eating a quick lunch with one's hat on.
Mae WestWe are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.
Gerald BrenanWhat is difficult? To keep a secret, to employ leisure well, to be able to bear an injury.
Chilon of SpartaOne of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens.
Joshua FoerUp until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God's power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature.
Elizabeth GilbertThe slave labors, but with no cheer - it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens' trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.
Henry Ward BeecherWe do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.
C. S. LewisGood-humor is a state between gayety and unconcern,--the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
Samuel JohnsonTiming 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.
B. C. ForbesFor a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.
Noam ChomskyThe men and woman who make the best boon companions seem to have given up hope of doing something else...some defect of talent or opportunity has cut them off from their pet ambition and has thus left them with leisure to take an interest in their lives of others. Your ambition may be, it makes him keep his thoughts at home. But the heartbroken people - if I may use the word in a mild, benevolent sense - the people whose wills are subdued to fate, give us consolation, recognition, and welcome.
John Jay ChapmanFor if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
George OrwellAnyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of housework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.
Anna Garlin SpencerAgriculture probably required a far greater discipline than did any form of food collecting. Seeds had to be planted at certain seasons, some protection had to be given to the growing plants and animals, harvests had to be reaped, stored and divided. Thus, we might argue that it was neither leisure time nor a sedentary existence but the more rigorous demands associated with an agricultural way of life that led to great cultural changes.
Charles HeiserLetters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
Agnes RepplierI would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world.
Honore Gabriel Riqueti, comte de MirabeauThe best pastimes for a true enjoyer of leisure who has to stay at home . . .: reading by the fireside. . . . Listening to music.
Salvador de MadariagaIt is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less. On, on, on for ever, without recreation may suit spirits emancipated from this 'heavy clay', but while we are in this tabernacle, we must every now and then cry halt, and serve the Lord by holy inaction and consecrated leisure. Let no tender conscience doubt the lawfulness of going out of harness for a while
Charles Spurgeon... to work, to work hard, to see work steadily, and see it whole, was the way to be reputable. I think I always respected a goodblacksmith more than a lady of leisure.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps WardIt is that unoccupied space which makes a room habitable, as it is our leisure hours which make life endurable.
Lin YutangNow that practical skills have developed enough to provide adequately for material needs, one of these sciences which are not devoted to utilitarian ends [mathematics] has been able to arise in Egypt, the priestly caste there having the leisure necessary for disinterested research.
AristotleEinstein is notmerely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted.
Havelock EllisThe secret to the city is integration. Every area of the city should combine work, leisure and culture. Separate these functions and parts of the city die.
Jaime LernerCompanies have long gathered data to break down their customer base into specific segments. Now political parties have become adept at micro-targeting, too, using data on shopping habits, leisure activities, voting histories, charity donations, and so on, in order to pinpoint likely supporters and the type of appeal most likely to win them over.
James SurowieckiWe enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offence to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silent, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.
Walter Savage LandorIngenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in.
George EliotNothing makes God more supreme and more central in worship than when a people are utterly persuaded that nothing - not money or prestige or leisure or family or job or health or sports or toys or friends - nothing is going to bring satisfaction to their sinful, guilty, aching hearts besides God.
John PiperThe quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.
Thorstein VeblenAutomation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we're all in it together. It'll work when there's a shared sense of destiny. It can be done!
Jerry Brown