Leisure Activities Quotes

Half by desipience, half by proclivity, he had come to live in a world where the only significant leisure activities were coupling and consuming. His batrachian lips pursed into a smile, and he dug again into the honey. ~ John Fowles

The critical question for our generation - and for every generation
is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the
friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties
you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no
human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with
heaven, if Christ were not there? ~ John Piper

My hobbies and leisure activities include cars and golf. ~ Michael Strahan

With a century and change between the 1880 convention and now, I'll admit I rolled my eyes at the ideological hairsplitting, wondering how a group of people who more or less agreed with one another about most issues could summon forth such stark animosity. Thankfully, we Americans have evolved, our hearts made larger, our minds more open, welcoming the negligible differences among our fellows with compassion and respect. As a Democrat who voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, an election suspiciously tipped to tragic Republican victory because of a handful of contested ballots in the state of Florida, I, for one, would never dream of complaining about the votes siphoned in that state by my fellow liberal Ralph Nader, who convinced citizens whose hopes for the country differ little from my own to vote for him, even though had those votes gone to Gore, perhaps those citizens might have spent their free time in the years to come more pleasurably pursuing leisure activities, such as researching the sacrifice of Family Garfield, instead of attending rallies and protests against wars they find objectionable, not to mention the money saved on aspirin alone considering they'll have to pop a couple every time they read the newspaper, wondering if the tap water with which they wash down the pills is safe enough to drink considering the corporate polluter lobbyists now employed at the EPA. ~ Sarah Vowell

On the list of european royalty's leisure activities, "overrunning Poland" has historically been a close second to "sex". ~ Mental Floss

The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV packages, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. ~ Mark Steyn

In New York, the principal leisure activity is internal bleeding. ~ Richard Jeni

All that remains of the garden city in our own day are traffic-free enclaves, islands in a sea of traffic where the pedestrian leads a legally protected by languishing existence, comparable to that of the North American Indians on their reservations ... In reality the modern urbanist regards the city as a gigantic centre of production, geared to the efficient transport of workers and goods, to the accommodation of people and the storage of wares, to industrial and commercial activity. The rest, that is to say creativity, life, is optional and comes under the heading of recreation and leisure activities. ~ Tom McDonough

Something about her suggested that her leisure activities included wrestling large woodland animals and banging bricks together. ~ Maureen Johnson

I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me - I would go so far as to say that it's my favourite leisure activity, ~ Ben Goldacre

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in. ~ Mark Steyn

You have heard, of course, of those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil that attack the unwary swimmer by thousands and with swift little nibbles clean him up in a few minutes, leaving only an immaculate skeleton? Well, that's what their organization is. "Do you want a good clean life? Like everybody else?" You say yes, of course. How can one say no? "O.K. You'll be cleaned up. Here's a job, a family, and organized leisure activities." And the little teeth attack the flesh, right down to the bone. But I am unjust. I shouldn't say their organization. It is ours, after all: it's a question of which will clean up the other. ~ Albert Camus

A culture is much more than politics. It is a national identity encompassing education, fine and popular arts and entertainment, science, physical and mental health, leisure activities, friend and family relationships, values, ambitions. . .everything that constitutes the basic shared core values of any country. In our case, the core value of individualism has been the common denominator linking all other aspects of our cultural distinctiveness; it is what makes The United States "America." Viable only where Liberty reigns, valuing the sovereignty of individuals is precisely what makes America exceptional; therefore, it is the culture that warrants attention because the actual, underlying disease invading the mental health of our country has arisen not from the government directly but from the injection of deleterious ideas into our entire individualistic social-economic system. Proposals ~ Alexandra York

Companies 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 Surowiecki

For the most part, our jobs require us to use our skills, engage our minds, and pursue our goals - all things that have been shown to contribute to happiness. Of course, leisure activities can do this too, but because they're not required of us - because there is no "leisure boss" leaning over our shoulder on Sunday mornings telling us we'd better be at the art museum by 9 A.M. sharp ~ Shawn Achor

People are often quite surprised by the sport and leisure activities practised by the blind. For example, tandem cycling is very popular. ~ Andrea Bocelli

...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking. This line of reasoning suggests that the kind of appreciative attention where one remains focused on what one is doing can arise only in leisure activities. Such a conclusion would put pleasurable absorption beyond the ken of any activity that is undertaken for the sake of making money, because although money is undoubtedly good, it is not intrinsically so. ~ Matthew Crawford

For there is much to do, amounting in fact to a remaking of modern society. All democratic experiments, all revolutions, all demands for equality have so far, in every instance, stopped short of sexual equality. Every society has in its prestige structures a series of subtle, interacting codes of dominance that always, everywhere, finally rank men higher than women. Nowhere has any society successfully dispensed with the age-old sex-role division of labor and the rewards in goods and power that accompany it. Nowhere do women enjoy the rights, privileges, possibilities and leisure time that men do. Everywhere men still mediate between women and power, women and the state, women and freedom, women and themselves. ~ Rosalind Miles

The standard is clear. If something we think, see, hear, or do distances us from the Holy Ghost, then we should stop thinking, seeing, hearing, or doing that thing ... Because we estrange the Spirit of the Lord when we engage in activities we know we should shun, then such things definitely are not for us. ~ David A. Bednar

Western man had relearned-what the rest of the world had never forgotten-that there was nothing sinful in leisure as long as it did not degenerate into mere sloth. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Paul followed Jesus by living as He lived. And how did he do that? Through activities and ways of living that would train his whole personality to depend upon the risen Christ as Christ trained Himself to depend upon the Father. ~ Dallas Willard

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time ... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now. ~ Richard Koch

Giving other people advice is one of the most irritating and useless activities known to man. ~ Barbara Mertz

We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it's never a question of 'critical mass.' It's always about critical connections. ~ Grace Lee Boggs

It's a combination of science, maintenance, and general housekeeping. And then, occasionally, robotics activities or a spacewalk you might get to do. ~ Scott Kelly

Live theatre provides a rush you can't get in film or television. But it is the TV and film work that offers the leisure to go off and do a play. ~ Raymond Cruz

Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence. ~ Josef Pieper

The credit for Erté's rediscovery must be given to French writer Jacques Damase, who met the artist when preparing a book on the Parisian music-hall. It was not merely his active presence which astounded Damase, but the fact that neatly stored away were thousands of perfectly preserved drawings representing a life's work. The immediate result was an exhibition at Galerie Motte in 1965, organised with Jacques Perrin, who the following year held another exhibition at his own gallery in Paris. Through the Motte exhibition, Erté was brought to the attention of galleria Milano, which in 1965 included some of his work in a pioneering exhibition of Art Déco. The most prominent event in this sequence was was Erté inclusion in the important exhibition Les Années 25 held at Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in 1966, which put an historical and artistic seal on Art Déco and the diverse artistic activities of the 'twenties.

It is fair to say, however, that complete international reappraisal only came about after Grosvenor gallery in London became his world agents. Jacques Damase had suggested an exhibition of Erté's work to this London gallery, to which, at that time, I was acting as an art consultant. As a result we were able to prepare his first ever London exhibition in 1967. The remarkable success it achieved was presaged by a smaller exhibition in New York a few months earlier. It had planned to follow the London show with a similar collection in new York, based on work b ~ Charles Spencer

In a recluse, the most irrevocable, lifelong rejection of the world often has as its basis an uncontrolled passion for the crowd, of such force that, finding when he does go out that he cannot win the admiration of a concierge, passers-by or even the coachman halted at the corner, he prefers to spend his life out of their sight, and gives up all activities which would make it necessary for him to leave the house. ~ Marcel Proust

He is the real Guru Who can reveal the form of the formless before your eyes; who teaches the simple path, without rites or ceremonies; Who does not make you close your doors, and hold your breath, and renounce the world; Who makes you perceive the Supreme Spirit whenever the mind attaches itself; Who teaches you to be still in the midst of all your activities. Fearless, always immersed in bliss, he keeps the spirit of yoga in the midst of enjoyments. ~ Kabir

I'm not lazy, simply adept at leisure ~ Bemy Wells

In the sciences, looking good was usually a negative. It implied you wasted time on outdoor activities instead of building something useful. Even using hair product or makeup implied misguided priorities. Like you thought how things looked mattered, instead of how they worked. We liked to look at attractive people. We expected it of our movie stars and TV characters. But we did not respect it. We knew physical attractiveness was inversely correlated with intelligence, because look at us. ~ Max Barry

The "first woman judge" was a colorful figure whose activities inspired longer stories than the spare announcements that had followed the passage of the woman suffrage bill. ~ Taft Alfred Larson

A very good career choice would be to gravitate toward those activities and to embrace those desires that harmonize with your core intentions, which are freedom and growth - and joy. Make a 'career' of living a happy life rather than trying to find work that will produce enough income that you can do things with your money that will then make you happy. When feeling happy is of paramount importance to you - and what you do 'for a living' makes you happy - you have found the best of all combinations. ~ Esther Hicks

Let us remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think about doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism. ~ Richard Dawkins

When it comes to extracurricular activities, many children are getting too much of a good thing. ~ Carl Honore

We therefore work, not
for the work's sake, but for money - and money is supposed to get us
what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United
States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched
and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle andupper classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as
princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money
alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art
and a skill for which we have little talent or energy. ~ Alan W. Watts

should therefore make the most of every half-hour in which she can command his attention. When she is secure of him, there will be more leisure for falling in love as much as she chooses." "Your plan is a good one," replied Elizabeth, "where nothing is in question but the desire of being well married, and if I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But these are not Jane's feelings; she is not acting by design. As yet, she cannot even be certain of the degree of her own regard nor of its reasonableness. She has known him only a fortnight. She ~ Jane Austen

Costa Rica and Germany have simply been pawns in the Japanese quest to silence Sea Shepherd in an attempt to stop our annual opposition of their illegal whaling activities. ~ Paul Watson

Most of what's known about religious practices in pre-Hispanic Mexico has come to us through a Catholic parish priest named Hernando Ruiz de Alarcón, one of the few who ever became fluent in the Nahuatl language. He spent the 1620s writing his "Treatise on the Superstitions and Heathen Customs that Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain". He'd originally meant it to be something of a "field guide to the heathens" to help priests recognize and exterminate indigenous religious rites and their practitioners. In the process of his documentation, though, it's clear from his writings that Father Ruiz de Alarcón grew sympathetic. He was particularly fascinated with how Nahuatl people celebrated the sacred in ordinary objects, and encouraged living and spirit realities to meet up in the here and now. He noted that the concept of "death" as an ending did not exactly exist for them. When Aztec people left their bodies, they were presumed to be on an exciting trip through the ether. It wasn't something to cry about, except that the living still wanted to visit with them. People's sadness was not for the departed, but for themselves, and could be addressed through ritual visiting called Xantolo, an ordinary communion between the dead and the living. Mexican tradition still holds that Xantolo is always present in certain places and activities, including marigold fields, the cultivation of corn, the preparation of tamales and pan de muerto. Interestingly, farmers' markets ar ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I enjoy my work so much that I have to be pulled away from my work into leisure. ~ Ralph Nader

These activities can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and used to harm you as an individual, even without the government having any intent to do you wrong. ~ Edward Snowden

The instant that movies became described as character driven was the instant when characters stopped mattering in movies. In other words, the birth of the notion of the character-driven movie coincided with the birth of movies in which characters were incidental to the very activities in which they engaged. ~ Steve Erickson

For within the very structure of family life, in families that do or did embrace the male religions, are the almost invisibly accepted social customs and life patterns that reflect the one-time strict adherence to the biblical scriptures. Attitudes towards double-standard premarital virginity, double-standard marital fidelity, the sexual autonomy of women, illegitimacy, abortion, contraception, rape, childbirth, the importance of marriage and children to women, the responsibilities and role of women in marriage, women as sex objects, the sexual identification of passivity and aggressiveness, the roles of women and men in work or social situations, women who express their ideas, female leadership, the intellectual activities of women, the economic activities and needs of women and the automatic assumption of the male as breadwinner and protector have all become so deeply ingrained that feelings and values concerning these subjects are often regarded, by both women and men, as natural tendencies or even human instinct. ~ Merlin Stone

We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity but we do not - nor will we ever - monitor ideology or political beliefs. We take seriously our responsibility to protect the civil rights and liberties of the American people, including subjecting our activities to rigorous oversight from numerous internal and external sources. ~ Janet Napolitano

The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure. ~ Thorstein Veblen

Brian Eno and Robert Fripp's foray into some artful excursions into some ethereal electric experiments. There was a lot curious activities emerging in London, Amsterdam, and Berlin back then developing some fiercely fuzzy of synth-like effects way outside the norm which really blew the lid off things. ~ Billy Gibbons

...9/11 was immediately understood not only as a tragedy for the United States and the city of New York but also as a global outrage, which took the lives of so many citizens from across the world. The headline emphasized the manner in which questions of identity were geographically and emotionally connected - the local (New York, Pennsylvania and Washington), the national (United States), and the global. Shortly afterwards, however, the event became reinscribed in overwhelmingly national terms - 'Attack on America'. Tragically, as former Vice President Al Gore has said, the United States has squandered that global goodwill and solidarity by its largely unilateral engagement in Iraq and other activities which have been judged by others to be inimical to international law, such as extraordinary rendition, detention camps, and the doctrine of pre-emption. We are certainly not all Americans now. ~ Klaus Dodds

In judging other people's work, particularly short stories, I have noticed how novice writers tell the readers everything about their characters in the first paragraphs, disclose their motives, reveal their recent activities and their future intentions. ~ Ruth Rendell

I love the idea that people are listening to "Tales" during all types of activities. Knitting in their favorite chair, rock climbing, sky diving, driving at night. ~ Glenn McQuaid

Television's contribution to family life has been an equivocal one. For while it has, indeed, kept the members of the family from dispersing, it has not served to bring them together. By its domination of the time families spend together, it destroys the special quality that distinguishes one family from another, a quality that depends to a great extent on what a family does, what special rituals, games, recurrent jokes, familiar songs, and shared activities it accumulates. ~ Marie Winn

- Family

Tell me about your family.
Does everyone live in the area?
What do you like best about being a father/mother/son/aunt, etc.?

-Occupation

What got you into your current job?
How did you come up with that idea?
What are some of the toughest challenges in your job?
If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be?
How has the Internet impacted your business/industry?

- Recreation

What do you do for fitness?
What kinds of things does your family do for fun?
How do you spend your leisure time?
What's been your favorite vacation?

- Miscellaneous
Have you seen any good movies lately?
What do you think about - - - - - [news event]?
Are you reading anything you really enjoy? ~ Debra Fine

This is the first great problem of modern democracy ... how to get a fair living by reasonable hours of work leaving enough leisure for both childhood and manhood. ~ John R. Commons

To resist the social pressure now put even on one's leisure time, requires a tougher upbringing and a more obstinate willfulness about going one's own way, than ever before. ~ Robert Graves

Our childhood is too brief to fill it with activities that stifle our spirit and rob our joy. ~ Richard Blackaby

Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence. ~ Herman Melville

I sat at a table in my shadowy kitchen, staring down a bottle of Boone's Farm
Hard Lemonade, when a magic fluctuation hit. My wards shivered and died, leaving my home stripped of its defenses. The TV flared into life, unnaturally loud in the empty house.
I raised my eyebrow at the bottle and bet it that another urgent bulletin was on.
The bottle lost.
"Urgent bulletin!" Margaret Chang announced. "The Attorney General advises all citizens that any attempt at summoning or other activities resulting in the appearance of a supernaturally powerful being can be hazardous to yourself and to other citizens."
"No shit," I told the bottle. ~ Ilona Andrews