Idleness Quotes

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day. ~ A.A. Milne

Idleness makes people feeble and peevish. Work makes them stalwart and prone to anger. ~ Mason Cooley

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

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,
cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness. ~ Anthony Trollope

He mingled idleness and idealism so that he could not separate them. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Static people love to compensate for their inability to change themselves by always trying to change the world. ~ Criss Jami

Numa turned his attention to domestic matters. The removal of all danger from without would induce his subjects to luxuriate in idleness, as they would be no longer restrained by the fear of an enemy or by military discipline. To prevent this, he strove to inculcate in their minds the fear of the gods, regarding this as the most powerful influence which could act upon an uncivilised and, in those ages, a barbarous people. ~ Livy

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues. Be active in business, that temptation may miss her aim; the bird that sits is easily shot. ~ Benjamin Franklin

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. ~ Virginia Woolf

It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually. ~ Anthony Trollope

Idleness does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formualries of the ruling class. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Keep busy, Granny Sugars used to say, even if with poker, fighting, and fast cars, because idleness will get you in worse trouble. ~ Dean Koontz

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation. ~ Jeremy Taylor

We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence. ~ Geraldine Brooks

It was in idleness that one came face-to-face with the I AM. With simple, elemental Being. ~ Mary Balogh

Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed. ~ Samuel Johnson

Idleness leads to relaxation, sooner or later bringing about ideological and material corruption, accompanied by lack of discipline, anarchy chaos and defeat. ~ Samora Machel

The agencies tried to give the few incentive positions they had to women to encourage what they called 'gender balance' and, apart from those who chose to hustle in the market for a pittance, the remainder of the male population had no ability to provide for their families. They felt emasculated and camouflaged their injured pride in khat and idleness. There was little in their world that they controlled and so the one thing they sought to master, above all else, was their women. Muna ~ Ben Rawlence

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

Taxes are indeed very heavy -
We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness.
Three times as much by our Pride.
And four times as much by our Folly. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel. ~ John Quincy Adams

In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base. ~ John Ruskin

We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. ~ G.K. Chesterton

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

For Kim did nothing with an immense success. ~ Rudyard Kipling

When I'm working I'm wishing I was doing nothing and when I'm doing nothing I'm wondering if I should be working. I hurry through what I've got to do and then, when I've got nothing to do, I keep glancing at the clock, wishing it was time to go out. Then, when I'm out, I'm wondering how long it will be before I'm back home. ~ Geoff Dyer

Days one mindlessly fritters away are the best days ~ Marty Rubin

No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Time is one thing that can never be retrieved. One may lose and regain friends. One may lose and regain money. Opportunity, once spurned, may come again. But the hours that are lost in idleness can never be brought back to be used in gainful pursuits ~ Winston Churchill

People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company. ~ Jeremy Collier

Proverbs 31:27: She looketh well to the way of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness. ~ Sandra Dallas

Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is. ~ William Barrett

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

All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue. ~ Emile Zola

All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence. ~ Charles Dickens

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental. ~ Stephen Spender

Idleness and constancy fix the mind to what it finds easy and agreeable. This habit always confines and cramps up our knowledge; and no one has ever taken the trouble to stretch and carry his understanding as far as it could go. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes
useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it's just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Nothing that remains static is truly ever alive. Nature does not abide idleness. All energy sources of the natural world and the cosmos are in a constant motion, they are in a perpetual state of fluctuation. All forms of living must make allowances for the seasons of change. The Earth itself is twirling through space, spinning on its axis analogous to a child's top. The unpredictable forces of instability brought about by a combination of motion, change, and flux propels the miraculous dynamism of existence. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Every little girl 'did her knitting stint' each day. Idleness was a cardinal sin in pioneer times. ~ Anne Macdonald

My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It's not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I know that if I do that I will fall into despair, and I know that it is worth doing anything in one's power to avoid depression because from there, from being depressed, it is only an imperceptible step to despair: the last refuge of the ego. ~ Geoff Dyer

So that's it," he said. "Three hundred dollars. I wish somebody would come into this country with a seed that had to be worked everyday from New Year's right on through Christmas. As soon as you niggers are laid-by, trouble starts. ~ William Faulkner

I can't believe this heat," Abbey said, taking her tunic and pulling it over her head. Underneath was a form-fitting top that showed a figure unaccustomed to idleness or excess. Kip stared at her the way he had at the shiney curves of the steel horse back in the garage. "Can you imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago, when weather changed just a few times a year?" she said, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. "Yeah, it must have looked great," Kip said. "What do you mean looked great?" Abbey said, turning her eye on Kip. "Must have been great, like you said," he corrected. ~ Shawn Keenan

Man's greatest threat is idleness. ~ VD.

I live an idle burden to the ground. ~ Homer

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

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy.
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find there's no need. ~ John Lennon

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. ~ James Kirke Paulding

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness. ~ George Borrow

Having made a few bicycles in factories, having written some thousands of rather senseless advertisements, having rubbed affectionately the legs of a few race horses, having tried blunderingly to love a few women and having written a few novels that did not satisfy me or anyone else, having done these few things, could I begin now to think of myself as tired out and done for? Because my own hands had for the most part served me so badly could I let them lie beside me in idleness? ~ Sherwood Anderson

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

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. ~ Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed. ~ Samuel Johnson

The planting is reserved for those who come after us and have the foresight to bring seed. I only clear the ground for them. Clearing ground an piling stones is little enough, but it is better than sitting in idleness. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading. ~ Benedict Of Nursia

Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God. ~ Martin Luther

Provide yourself with such work for your hands as can be done, if possible, both during the day and at night, so that you are not a burden to anyone, and indeed can give to others, as St. Paul the Apostle advises (cf. I Thess. 2:9; Eph. 4:28). In this manner you will overcome the demon of listlessness and drive away all the desires suggested by the enemy; for the demon of listlessness takes advantage of idleness. 'Every idle man is full of desires' (Prov. 13:4 LXX). ~ Evagrius Ponticus

To be idle requires a strong sense of personal identity. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

He that rises late must trot all day. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Idleness is an enemy of the soul. ~ Benedict Of Nursia

Given enough idleness & time, she could talk herself into either loving or hating the man ~ Karin Slaughter

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination ... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do not bring forth in the agitation. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Idleness is the key of beggary. ~ Charles Spurgeon

And so he drifted back to London ... where he lived a life of increasingly busy idleness as he searched out one diversion after another ~ Mary Balogh

Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Life is best enjoyed when time periods are evenly divided between labor, sleep, and recreation ... all people should spend one-third of their time in recreation which is rebuilding, voluntary activity, never idleness. ~ Brigham Young

It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. ~ Edward Gibbon

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper. ~ Hannah More

The richer we get in a consumer society, the more acutely we become aware of how many grades of value--of both leisure and labor--we have climbed. The higher we are on the pyramid, the less likely we are to give up time to simple idleness and to apparently nonproductive pursuits. The joy of listening to the neighborhood finch is easily overshadowed by stereophonic recordings of "Bird Songs of the World," the walk through the park downgraded by preparations for a packaged bird-watching tour into the jungle. It becomes difficult to economize time when all commitments are for the long run. Staffan Linder points out that there is a strong tendency for us to over-commit to the future, so that when the future becomes present, we seem to be conscious all the time of having an acute scarcity, simply because we have committed ourselves to about thirty hours a day instead of twenty-four. In addition to the mere fact that time has competitive uses and high marginal utility in an affluent society, this overcommitment creates a sense of pressure and harriedness. ~ Ivan Illich

The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

When it shall be desired to enlighten man, let him always have truth laid before him. Instead of kindling his imagination by the idea of those pretended goods that a future state has in reserve for him, let him be solaced, let him be succoured; or, at least, let him be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labour; let not his substance be ravaged from him by cruel imposts; let him not be discouraged from work, by finding all his labour inadequate to support his existence, let him not be driven into that idleness that will surely lead him on to crime: let him consider his present existence, without carrying his views to that which may attend him after his death: let his industry be excited; let his talents be rewarded; let him be rendered active, laborious, beneficent, and virtuous, in the world he inhabits; let it be shown to him that his actions are capable of having an influence over his fellow men, but not on those imaginary beings located in an ideal world. ~ Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron. ~ Samuel Smiles

Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever ~ Edmund Burke

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

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders ... It is a species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals. ~ Francois Fenelon

Idleness and luxury are the devil's jackals, and find him abundant prey. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Then Childermass related to Mr Norrell what he had discovered about Drawlight: how he belonged to a certain breed of gentlemen, only to be met with in London, whose main occupation is the wearing of expensive and fashionable clothes; how they pass their lives in ostentatious idleness, gambling and drinking to excess and spending months at a time in Brighton and other fashionable watering places; how in recent years this breed seemed to have reached a sort of perfection in Christopher Drawlight. Even his dearest friends would have admitted that he possessed not a single good quality. ~ Susanna Clarke

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness. ~ Ambrose Bierce

What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness? ~ John Heywood

Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. ~ Dorothy Parker

I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, law suits do for others who, like me, have no particular vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. ~ Michel De Montaigne

A man is not allowed to practise medicine unless he knows something of the human body, but a financier is allowed to operate freely without any knowledge at all of the multifarious effects of his activities, with the sole exception of the effect upon his bank account. ~ Bertrand Russell

Remove idleness from the world and soon the arts of Cupid would perish. ~ Francois Rabelais

Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves. ~ Anne Baxter

The monasteries of Bohemia demand more of their brotherhood than some are prepared to give. The daily routine of back-breaking idleness proves too much for certain novices. The self-inflicted orgies that are the inevitable punishment for the slightest deviation into the bourgeois way of life are more than their frail flesh can stand. Many discover to their shame that they have scruples; they have roots, and greatest disadvantage of all, they have hope ~ Quentin Crisp

To learn to be without desire
you must desire that.
Better to do as you please:
sing idleness.
Floating clouds, and water idly running --
Where's their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky,
you'll never find it. ~ Yuan Mei

The used key is always bright. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I am persuaded that normal human beings are biologically built for an activity that is aimed toward a goal and that idleness, or aimless work (like Auschwitz's Arbeit), gives rise to suffering and to atrophy. ~ Primo Levi

True blessing comes in the dress of sweats, never delaying to wave bye to the excuses and procrastination. True blessing lies in hard work! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Gossip, like ennui, is born of idleness. ~ Ninon De L'Enclos

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes makes its way to the surface. ~ Virginia Woolf

Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. ~ Henry Ford

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. ~ James Terry White

How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too! ~ William Cowper

Other men have acquired fame by industry, but this man by indolence. ~ Tacitus

It is a mighty error to suppose that none but violent and strong passions, such as love and ambition, are able to vanquish the rest. Even idleness, as feeble and languishing as it is, sometimes reigns over them; it usurps the throne and sits paramount over all the designs and actions of our lives, and imperceptibly wastes and destroys all our passions and all our virtues. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld