Idle Quotes

He wondered for an idle moment if he'd ever see her again, but it didn't look likely. You have to be realistic, after all, and getting through tomorrow seemed like quite the ambition. ~ Joe Abercrombie

He was very interested in everything that lay to the North because no one ever went that way and he was never allowed to go there himself. When he was sitting out of doors mending the nets, and all alone, he would often look eagerly to the North. One could see nothing but a grassy slope running up to a level ridge and beyond that the sky with perhaps a few birds in it.

Sometimes if Arsheesh was there Shasta would say, 'O my Father, what is there beyond that hill?' And then if the fisherman was in a bad temper he would box Shasta's ears and tell him to attend to his work. Or if he was in a peaceable mood he would say, "O my son, do not allow your mind to be distracted by idle questions. For one of the poets has said, 'Application to business is the root of prosperity, but those who ask questions that do not concern them are steering the ship of folly towards the rock of indigence'.

Shasta thought that beyond the hill there must be some delightful secret which his father wished to hide from him. In reality, however, the fisherman talked like this because he didn't know what lay to the North. Neither did he care. He had a very practical mind. ~ C.S. Lewis

It is ... idle to pretend, as many do, that there is no contradiction between religion and science. Science contradicts religion as surely as Judaism contradicts Islam-they are absolutely and irresolvably conflicting views. Unless, that is, science is obliged to change its fundamental nature. ~ Bryan Appleyard

Belief fails when it works not well indeed but is idle as a sleeping man ... Each virtuous deed is strong when it is grounded upon the solidity of belief. ~ John Wycliffe

All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas. ~ Nick Cave

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The wood-carver can fashion whatever he will. Yet his products are but toys of the moment, to be glanced at in jest, not fashioned according to any precept or law. When times change, the carver too will change his style and make new trifles to hit the fancy of the passing day. But there is another kind of artist, who sets more soberly about his work, striving to give real beauty to the things which men actually use and to give to them the shape which tradition has ordained. This maker of real things must not for a moment be confused with the maker of idle toys. ~ Murasaki Shikibu

Hope is not an idle term. Hope is the reality that can and does reveal itself to us at God's choice hour. To hope is to know the secret of achievement. ~ Sri Chinmoy

Nevertheless, there are many respects, in tiny and contemptible matters, where our curiosity is provoked every day. How often do we slip, who can count? How many times we initially act as if we put up with people telling idle tales in order not to offend the weak, but then gradually we find pleasure in listening. I now do not watch a dog chase a rabbit when this is happening at the circus. But if by chance I am passing when coursing occurs in the countryside, it distracts me perhaps indeed from thinking out some weighty matter. The hunt turns me to an interest in the sport, not enough to lead me to alter the direction of the beast I am riding, but shifting the inclination of my heart. Unless you had proved to me my infirmity and quickly admonished me either to take the sight as the start for some reflection enabling me to rise up to you or wholly to scorn and pass the matter by, I would be watching like an empty-headed fool. When I am sitting at home, a lizard catching flies or a spider entrapping them as they rush into its web often fascinates me. The problem is not made any different by the fact that the animals are small. The sight leads me on to praise you, the marvellous Creator and orderer of all things; but that was not how my attention first began. It is one thing to rise rapidly, another thing not to fall. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. ~ Mary Schmich

Anathema didn't only believe in ley-lines, but in seals, whales, bicycles, rainforests, whole grain in loaves, recycled paper, white South Africans out of South Africa, and Americans out of practically everywhere down to and including Long Island. She didn't compartmentalize her beliefs. They were welded into one enormous, seamless belief, compared with which that held by Joan of Arc seemed a mere idle notion. ~ Terry Pratchett

Only the guiding hand of the true and uncorrupted Nisirtu has allowed humanity to progress to its current state. The human cesspool in this country idle away their time texting or emailing or calling one another on their shiny toys to babble incessantly about every second of their miserable, directionless lives. It is like the grunting of pigs in pens. They send endless streams of photos of themselves to their slave friends. And do you know why they do this? Because their lives have so little meaning that they secretly wonder if they even exist. ~ Samuel Fort

The question that we need to address is this: What relevance do these ancient traditions have to the experience of a modern adolescent growing up in the Western world? Rather than indulge in idle speculation, I have invited a number of young people to express their views on psychedelics and the effects these substances have had upon their lives and minds. ~ Rick Doblin

I woke up dead.
Not only dead...but in hell.
I had always been somewhat sketchy on what the afterlife - were there actually such a thing - would be like for a person such as I. From all accounts and all my imaginings, I figured it would be one of two things. Either I would be surrounded by great, burning masses that were endlessly immolating souls in torment... or else I would find myself trapped within my own mind as a helpless bystander, condemned to watching me live out my life over and over again and powerless to do anything to change any of it. When idle speculation prompted me to dwell on these two options, I would find myself drawn invariably to the former, since the later was just too hideous to contemplate.
...
I was almost afraid to open my eyes, because once I did, I would know one way or the other. Perhaps I could have just lain there forever. Perhaps I was supposed to. Perhaps that was my true condemnation: to simply reside in hell with my eyes closed afraid of opening them lest matters deteriorate even further than they already had. This, in turn, made me dwell on the fact that every time I had believed things couldn't get worse, they promptly had done so with almost gleeful enthusiasm . ~ Peter David

It is idle to hope for the enforcement of a law where nineteen-twentieths of the people do not believe in the justice of its provisions. ~ Edmund Morris

The Idoni Primor's gaze fell on Eren immediately. Her head tilted in idle curiosity while a fingertip dipped into a crystal bowl beside her. "I know your face, anarch."

She brought her fingertip to her mouth and sucked it dry of gods only feared what hypnol. "You have been a most troublesome little asi of late. Have you come here to repent, to fall to your knees and beg to be allowed to return to the fold? Fair warning - you'll be on those knees for a while. ~ G.S. Jennsen

As for him who envies or even fears us (and envied and feared great powers must always be), and who on this account wishes Syracuse to be humbled to teach us a lesson, but would still have her survive in the interest of his own security, the wish that he indulges is not humanly possible. A man can control his own desires but he cannot likewise control circumstances; and in the event of his calculations proving mistaken, he may live to bewail his own misfortune, and wish to be again envying my prosperity. An idle wish, if he now sacrifice us and refuse to take his share of perils which are the same in reality, though not in name, for him as for us; what is nominally the preservation of our power being really his own salvation. ~ Thucydides

...never in peaceful times stand idle.. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

N artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty. ~ William Dean Howells

True belief and true repentance are twins: it would be idle to attempt to say which is born first. All the spokes of a wheel move at once when the wheel moves, and so all the graces commence action when regeneration is wrought by the Holy Ghost. Repentance, however, there must be. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Were possible for a man to discover a mode of existence in which he could feel that, though idle, he was of use to the world and fulfilling his duty, ~ Leo Tolstoy

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers. ~ George Henry Lewes

It's funny - when I first started as an actor, obviously there were long periods of being idle and all you want to do is work. So if I ever get the compulsion to feel like I should complain or feel like I want to take a break, I just remember how I was before and be very grateful for it. ~ Neil Jackson

It is not by idle chance that I have come here. ~ Holly Weiss

So, what have I learned over my long and weird life?
Well, first, that there are two kinds of people, and I don't much care for either of them. Second, when faced with a difficult choice, either way is often best. Third, always leave a party when people begin to play the bongos. ~ Eric Idle

How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellowes as I am putt them downe! ~ John Aubrey

Gossip is an idle talk that makes you look worse than the person you are talking about, and people tend to have more confidence in the person you talked about when they get tired of your gossip. Speak with love and kindness or don't speak at all. ~ Uzoma Nnadi

Having this, we want that.
Owning some, we want more.
Standing here, we wish to be there.
If it's impossible, we struggle to make it happen.
Why are we like this? Why not be content with some, here, and now? Why is enough not enough?
Because humans are ambitious creatures not meant to be idle or fruitless. We strive to learn, to grow, to achieve, to amass; therefore, we will never be content. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The bottom line is that we cannot sit idle as unparalleled rules and regulations significantly restrict our rights and ability to care for our families. ~ Alan Wilson

This isn't just a fascination, an idle crush, no, this is something deeper, a desire that snakes through my veins, hot and hungry. ~ Melody Grace

Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world's cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten. ~ Phyllis Chesler

I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment. ~ Susanna Clarke

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about
working people, minorities, and children. ~ Thomas Sowell

History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky. ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

I can make going to the dry-cleaners last an entire day, and the dry cleaners might be 150 yards from my front door. You might find it hard to believe, but I am bone-idle lazy. ~ Noel Gallagher

Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal ( ... ). There is a tendency ( ... ) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. ~ Harper Lee

A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat! ~ Eric Idle

Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren. ~ Thomas Carlyle

When the peasants and their song had vanished from his sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of anguish at his loneliness, his bodily idleness, his hostility to this world, came over him ... It was all drowned in the sea of cheerful common labor. God had given the day, God had given the strength. Both day and strength had been devoted to labour and in that lay the reward ... Levin had often admired this life, had often experienced a feeling of envy for the people who lived this life, but that day for the first time ... the thought came clearly to Levin that it was up to him to change that so burdensome, idle, artificial and individual life he lived into this laborious, pure and common, lovely life. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Idle minds are the devil's research-and-development department. ~ Robert Stacy McCain

I do pool exercises, like weightlifting but underwater. I walk, I swim ... I'm pretty fit for an old bloke. ~ Eric Idle

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you're the planet's biggest dunce, you can't repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses. One day, perhaps, some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you're here with me, I can't help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

I paused for a light at Hamilton and TWlfth and noticed the Nissan was running rough at idle. Two blocks later it backfired and stalled. I coaxed it into the center of the city. Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW! Ffft, ffft, ffft, KAPOW!
A Trans Am pulled up next to me at a light. The Trans Am was filled with high school kids. One of them stuck his head out of the passenger-side window.
"Hey lady," he said. "Sounds like you got a fartmobile." I flipped him an Italian goodwill gesture and pulled the ball cap low on my forehead.
(Three to get Deadly) ~ Janet Evanovich

Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature. That's what was passing through my mind, making my bed-rest almost a pleasure.

Sometimes I think that only the sick are truly healthy. ~ Olga Tokarczuk

Always look on the brighter side of life ~ Eric Idle

Ah," said Arthur, "er ... " He had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again. ~ Douglas Adams

As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us. By the time we learn everything, we slowly come to understand it. And while you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment: you are already attending to your new business; you live, you act, you move, you fulfill the new requirements of every new step of development. If, on the other hand, there were no schedule, no gradual enlightenment, if all the knowledge descended on you at once right there in one spot, then it's possible neither your brains nor your heart could bear it. ~ Imre Kertesz

As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. ~ George Eliot

Mathematics is not merely an idle art form, it is an essential part of our society. ~ Richard Hamming

Denton struck Charley as the kind of man who never wasted energy on extra movement or idle chitchat. He was foursquare Sonny Boy Williamson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Silvertone guitar, older than old school. ~ Natalie Baszile

Idle, profligate, ingrate. No one decent could ever want him. ~ Fay Weldon

Idle living turns me into an idiot. I can't afford to get stupid. I've already been irritating. I've used up my passes on personality flaws. ~ F.K. Preston

To me, the musical is best when it's a musical comedy. So if you have a very, very funny show, and very good, funny songs, that's what the musical does best. ~ Eric Idle

What most upset her, was the widespread use of slave labor. ...It is true Republicanism that drives the slaves half fed, and destitute of clothing...to labor...while the owner walks about idle...white men considered idleness a virtue even if they owned only one slave or none. No white man would do work considered too menial for his race. ~ Lynne Withey

I no longer think that laziness is all about being idle. I now know when I become lazy- when I stop learning new things, and cease to grow. ~ Assegid Habtewold

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is invisible labor. ~ Victor Hugo

Typical Hollywood crowd - all the kids are on drugs, and all the adults are on roller skates. ~ Eric Idle

Nothing remains idle and thrives. Life needs a moving force to prevent the devastating effects of stagnancy. That is why life employs change. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

When on the breath of Autumn's breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill! ~ Mary Howitt

A fool mistakes meekness for weakness and a quiet tongue for an idle mind. ~ R.A. Mathis

An idle life and a holy heart is a contradiction. ~ Thomas Brooks

Say "no" only when it really matters. Wear a bright red shirt with bright orange shorts? Sure. Put water in the toy tea set? Okay. Sleep with your head at the foot of the bed? Fine. Samuel Johnson said, "All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle. ~ Gretchen Rubin

When people attempt to morph themselves into someone they are not as a way of conforming to their view of how they should be, they quell the very parts of themselves that makes them who they need to be. If we all fell under the category of normal, how would anyone ever succeed? We would all hover in the same place forever. No one would improve. Everyone would remain idle. We may even all begin to retrogress. I believe that part of being human is to have the ability to change and improve yourself. Be who you need to be, not who you think you should be. ~ Avina Celeste

But nerves always festered in the stillness of waiting. Left at idle, the mind could make a coward of even the bravest man. ~ D.J. Molles

It's such fun to take a lot of people and create something silly. ~ Eric Idle

The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest. ~ Isaac D'Israeli

Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Talent is always more interesting - ambition is not interesting. If you have talent, you have to find ways of expressing it, but you may not be a success in the world's terms. ~ Eric Idle

I do not know who coined the statement "an idle mind is the devil's playground," but it is true. When camping in dangerous places, it is often recommended that you keep a campfire going to keep the predators away. When we set our hearts on fire, demonic predators stay out of our camp, which is my main point in this chapter. The apostle Paul put it best: "Love never fails" (see 1 Corinthians 13:8). We have spent several chapters talking about how to win spiritual battles in our own lives and in the lives of others. But when all else fails, remember this: Love cannot be defeated. ~ Kris Vallotton

War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to realize this and not make a game of it ... as it stands now it's the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Man preys on man; and you mourn for the idle tapestry that decorated a gothic pillar, and the dronish bell that summoned the fat priest to prayer. You mourn for the empty pageant of a name, when slavery flaps her wing, ... Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave? - Hell stalks abroad; - the lash resounds on the slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labour, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good night. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

People who truly have control over time always have some in their pocket to give to someone in need. A sense of priorities drives their use of time and it can shift away from the ordinary work that's easy to justify, in favor of the more ethereal, deeper things that are harder to justify. They protect their time from trivia and idiocy; these people are time rich. They provide themselves with a surplus of time. They might seem to idle, or relax more often than the rest, but that just might be a sign of their mastery, not their incompetence. ~ Scott Berkun

The dreadful thing about getting older is you cry at the drop of a hat. ~ Eric Idle

I live an idle burden to the ground. ~ Homer

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

Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for thought both early and late - thoughts both about and not about art. ~ Gustav Klimt

I used to be quite a big video game player at university and post-university in that weird moment in life before you have a proper job and you've got a lot of idle time. ~ Stephen Merchant

True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and though them, all the rest. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Sometimes I find it difficult to determine whether or not I'm merely spinning my wheels or making progress. Nevertheless, I must keep moving on until I reach a destination. For I would much rather be in perpetual motion with the promise of reaching some place majestic beyond the horizon, rather than sitting idle alongside a dirt road watching time hurriedly pass me by. ~ Terry A. O'Neal

Despite the universality of this change, which we're all buffeted by, there is a single, seemingly small change that I'll be most sorry about. It will sound meaningless, but: One doesn't see teenagers staring into space anymore. Gone is the idle mind of the adolescent. ~ Michael Harris

To be rich, to be famous? do these profit a year hence, when other names sound louder than yours, when you lie hidden away under ground, along with the idle titles engraven on your coffin? But only true love lives after you, follows your memory with secret blessings or pervades you, and intercedes for you. Non omnis moriar, if, dying, I yet live in a tender heart or two; nor am lost and hopeless, living, if a sainted departed soul still loves and prays for me. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

That life sometimes imitates art is a mere Oscar Wilde-ish curiosity; that it should set about to do so in such unseemly haste that between notes and novel (not to mention between the drafted and the printed page) what had been fiction becomes idle fact, invention history--disconcerting! Especially to a fictionist who, like yours truly, had long since turned his professional back on literary realism in favour of the fabulous irreal, and only in this latest enterprise had projected, not without misgiving, a detente with the realistic tradition. It is as if Reality, a mistress too long ignored, must now settle scores with her errant lover. ~ John Barth

Think not that when thou art dry and darksom in the presence of God, with faith and silence, that thou do'st nothing, that thou losest time, and that thou are idle, because not to wait on God, according to the saying of St. Bernard (Tom.5.in Fract. de vit. solit.c.8.p. 90.), is the greatest idleness ~ Miguel De Molinos

Take us generally as a people, we are neither lazy nor idle; and considering how little we have to excite or stimulate us, I am almost astonished that there are so many industrious and ambitious ones to be found - although I acknowledge, with extreme sorrow, that there are some who never were and never will be serviceable to society. And have you not a similar class among yourselves? ~ Maria W. Stewart

If you are idle, ask "why?" If you feel like life is boring for you, ask "why?" When you get into a disappointment, ask "why?" Even if you come out of all torments and disturbances, ask "why? ~ Israelmore Ayivor

The disgruntled are abundant among those who are idle, and to be idle is a matter of choice. ~ Dee Hock

A Bradypus or Sloth am I, / I live a life of ease, / Contented not to do or die / But idle as I please. ~ Michael Flanders

I think being idle is quite hard for me to do. ~ Tatiana Maslany

Loss of time through sociability, idle talk, luxury, even more sleep than is necessary for health, six to at most eight hours, is worthy of absolute moral condemnation. It ~ Max Weber

A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Proper loafing requires company.One man lying about is being idle; two men lying about is a lunch break. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months. ~ Charles Duhigg

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

These hapless livers were probably not always mere myths, and these legends which traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush or the rose were no idle poetic emblem of youth and beauty fleeting as the Summer flowers. ~ James George Frazer

If truth in hearts that perish
Could move the powers on high,
I think the love I bear you
Should make you not to die.
Sure, sure, if steadfast meaning,
If single thought could save,
The world might end to-morrow,
You should not see the grave.
This long and sure-set liking,
This boundless will to please,
-Oh, you should live for ever
If there were help in these.
But now, since all is idle,
To this lost heart be kind,
Ere to a town you journey
Where friends are ill to find. ~ A.E. Housman

Nobody gets irony anymore, as we are now living in the post-ironic age. Once George Bush gets a library, our irony is dead. ~ Eric Idle

By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small "independent" farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy, and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. ~ Mark Twain