Idle Men Quotes

Idle men tempt the devil to tempt them. ~ Charles Spurgeon

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Lucian's father had warned him to fear idle men. Without the pride gained from a good day's work, they were left to their vices and the doubts that crowded their head. Their hatred. Their envy. ~ Melina Marchetta

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Idle men make mischief, especially idle men supplied with ale, whores, and weapons. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. ~ Oscar Wilde

If a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise if one is idle. ~ Albrecht Durer

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

They would sooner be dicing, drinking, and flicking, I don't doubt, but Lord Randyll believes in putting idle men to work. ~ George R R Martin

There are three things that none of the young men of the present generation can do.They can't sit over their wine;they can't play at wist;and they can't pay a lady a compliment. ~ Wilkie Collins

Chess is a curse upon a man. ~ H.G.Wells

The greatness that would make us grave,
Is but an empty thing.
What more than mirth would mortals have?
The cheerful man's a king. ~ Isaac Bickerstaffe

Henry's breath hissed out through his teeth. That ba-bad man, he finished, with a quick glance at Cecily, who rolled her eyes. ~ Cassandra Clare

There's actually a contest for the largest pumpkin?"

"Oh, yes. Vegetable size is a cutthroat category, I gather. You know men. Always obsessed with the girth of their courgettes. ~ Lucy Parker

I've never experienced a bad situation with men being sexist with me. I've been very lucky - even when I was just starting and modeling in Milan and Paris. ~ Gal Gadot

But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance. ~ Frederick Soddy

The happiest thing that can be said about democracy ... is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility. ~ Harry Allen Overstreet

Science brings men nearer to God. ~ Louis Pasteur

For that is the people's verdict, but wise men on the whole reject the people's decrees. ~ Seneca.

Studies have shown that since women have had access to the pill and family planning measures, they have made huge gains in both wages and in careers that were dominated by men. ~ Jennifer Granholm

Great men have been characterized by the greatness of their mistakes as well as by the greatness of their achievements. ~ Abraham Myerson

As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind- of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which cloud forever and shadows form, dreams persisted; and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if you questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumph, happiness prevails, order rules, or to resist the extra ordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand which would render the possessor secure. Moreover softened and acquiescent, the spring with their bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloud about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and fights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her knowledge of the sorrows of mankind. ~ Virginia Woolf

God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two. ~ Victor Hugo

The man is free who is protected from injury. ~ Daniel Webster

Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience. ~ Roland Barthes

Men of all social stations live together: they are equal in their desires, yet vary in their methods; they are equal in their passions, yet different in their intelligence; that is their nature-given vitality. ~ Xunzi

Right around the time he hits his middle forties, a man starts giving serious thought to dying well. In his sleep, in his own bed, or in the course of a street fight meant to settle something meaningful. His end doesn't have to be poignant, just devoid of dignity. You wouldn't think that would be too much to ask.

But how a man leaves this world, much like the way he comes into it, is almost never his own call to make, so evil men die on satin sheets in 400-dollar-a-night hotel rooms, while good ones breathe their last lying face down in cold, dark alleyways, their bodies growing stiff and blue on beds of rain-soaked newspaper. ~ Gar Anthony Haywood

Then an argument would ensue because they were men with different ideas. ~ S.A. Tawks

Men do tend to talk about things on a much higher level. ~ Renee Ellmers

I've only ever chosen men who happen to spend a lot of time out of the country, who have jobs that take them all over the world, and I think that's interesting because my father was absent, and then home, and I've always been in relationships where there's separation. ~ Patsy Kensit

The man that created the theory of evolution by natural selection was thrown out by his Dad because he wanted him to be a doctor. GAWD, parents haven't changed much. ~ Charles Darwin

Each man has to work out his own understanding of what needs to be done, and then prepare himself to take advantage of the opportunity to succeed in a big way. ~ George S. Clason

I see that you laugh rarely though you could be naturally joyful , you control your features , and you fear on the presence of men to smile too cheerfully , speak too freely or move too quickly. ~ Charlotte Bronte

What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of Days has become an infant. He Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger. And He Who cannot be touched, Who is simple, without complexity, and incorporeal, now lies subject to the hands of men. He Who has broken the bonds of sinners, is now bound by an infant's bands. But He has decreed that ignominy shall become honor, infamy be clothed with glory, and total humiliation the measure of His Goodness. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people
men and women
to face. ~ Robert Jensen

Men have the best of this world. I hope that it will not always be so. ~ Agatha Christie

Knowing Master Huckaback to be a man of his word, as well as one who would have others so, I was careful to be in good time the next morning ... ~ R.D. Blackmore

Why send a daughter to school?" the men often say. "She doesn't need an education to run a house. ~ Malala Yousafzai

Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good. ~ Arcangela Tarabotti

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. More than that, we speak volumes – our language is the language of everything we have read. Shakespeare and the Authorised Version surface in supermarkets, on buses, chatter on radio and television. I find this miraculous. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything, that they blow with the wind, hibernate and reawaken, shelter parasitic on the most unlikely hosts, survive and survive and survive. ~ Penelope Lively

In the story of the blind men and the elephant, what's usually ignored is the fact that each man's description was correct. What Faye won't understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones. Yes, she is the meek and shy and industrious student. Yes, she is the panicky and frightened child. Yes, she is the bold and impulsive seductress. Yes, she is the wife, the mother. And many other things as well. Her belief that only one of these is true obscures the larger truth, which was ultimately the problem with the blind men and the elephant. It wasn't that they were blind - it's that they stopped too quickly, and so never knew there was a larger truth to grasp. ~ Nathan Hill