Idleness Quotes

It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.

Jerome K. Jerome

The hardest work is to go idle.

Jewish Proverb

Of all our faults the one that we excuse most easily is idleness.

La Rochefoucauld

Idleness like kisses to be sweet must be stolen.

Jerome K. Jerome

With enough 'ifs' we could put Paris into a bottle.

French proverb

We are lazier in our minds than in our bodies.

La Rochefoucauld

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest without passion without business without entertainment without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty insufficient dependent ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom gloom sorrow chagrin resentment and despair.

Blaise Pascal

He is idle that might be better employed.

Thomas Fuller

Nine-tenths of the miseries and vices of mankind proceed from idleness.

Thomas Carlyle

Did nothing in particular and did it very well.

W.S. Gilbert

If a soldier or labourer complains of the hardship of his lot set him to do nothing.

Blaise Pascal

How beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterward.

Spanish Proverb

Some people have a perfect genius for doing nothing and doing it assiduously.

Thomas Haliburton

Idleness is the holiday of fools.

Lord Chesterfield

He is not only idle who does nothing but he is idle who might be better employed.

Socrates

For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.

Isaac Watts

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

George Bernard Shaw

A physician can sometimes bury the scythe of death but he has no power over the sand in the hourglass.

Hester Lynch Thrale

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

More free time means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk beat his wife - and watch TV.

Robert M. Hutchins

It is no rest to be idle.

Paul Peel

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.

Jerome K. Jerome

There is less leisure now than in the Middle Ages when one third of the year consisted of holidays and festivals.

Ralph Borsodi

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

J.B. Priestley

Extreme busyness whether at school or college kirk or market is a symptom of deficient vitality and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Boredom was at the root of Lazare's unhappiness, an oppressive, unremitting boredom, exuding from everything like the muddy water of a poisoned spring. He was bored with leisure, with work, with himself even more than with others. Meanwhile he blamed his own idleness for it, he ended by being ashamed of it.

Émile Zola

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

Vladimir Nabokov

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any.

Jerome K. Jerome

Before you are much older...you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate will be next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray.

Richard Llewellyn

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men.

Augustine of Hippo

Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.

Anthony Burgess

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Franz Kafka

An idle genius is an oxymoron.

James Thornton

In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art from, she became dangerous.

Toni Morrison

Machinery which is not used is not capital.

Karl Marx

I am well known by my friends to be a workaholic - to their often justifiable annoyance. I am therefore keenly aware that such behavior is at best slightly pathological, and certainly in no sense makes one a better person.

David Graeber

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness.

Anton Chekhov

I didn’t want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.

Sara Sheridan

There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.

Vincent van Gogh

If [a man] spent his money, say, in giving parties for his friends, they (we may hope) would get pleasure, and so would all those upon whom he spent money, such as the butcher, the baker, and the bootlegger. But if he spends it (let us say) upon laying down rails for surface cars in some place where surface cars turn out not to be wanted, he has diverted a mass of labor into channels where it gives pleasure to no one. Nevertheless, when he becomes poor through failure of his investment he will be regarded as a victim of undeserved misfortune, whereas the gay spendthrift, who has spent his money philanthropically, will be despised as a fool and a frivolous person.

Bertrand Russell

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

Samuel Johnson

If you could not do much in the month of April with five letters, think of what really you can do with the month of May with three letters before you open the door of the month of June with four letters. Which is the break time for the entire twelve months of the year. Until you clearly understand how you are spending the year, you shall finish spending it and ponder over how you spent it, year after year! No one is absolutely free from excuses and the challenges of life. You just have to do something great with each day in the year!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I rather would entreat thy companyTo see the wonders of the world abroadThan, living dully sluggardiz'd at home,Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

William Shakespeare

My freshness is spending its wavering shower in the dust.

Francis Thompson

Idleness is a form of passivity in an active universe.

Michael Bassey Johnson

There are two types of patience. One is exercised in hard work and the other in idleness. Patience with hard work is the one that moves mountains. Patience in idleness moves nothing, not even cobwebs.

Israelmore Ayivor

There is no harvest without hard work, therefore never expect chance to solve your problems of abject need for you. You must take deliberate actions!

Israelmore Ayivor

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

They call it "business" because it does not become successful by a person's "idleness". Go get busy if you want to do business; but be busy for the right reasons!

Israelmore Ayivor

I never did anything in life to anyone's imagination.

Henry James

So many people die though they live, and it is not as if they don’t have life; they only refuse to keep breathing!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Extreme busyness is a symptom of deficient vitality, and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Robert Louis Stevenson

A conclusion I’ve come to at the Idler is that it starts with retreating from work but it’s really about making work into something that isn’t drudgery and slavery, and then work and life can become one thing.

Tom Hodgkinson

Labour-saving devices just make us try to cram more pointless activities into each day, rather than doing the important thing, which is to enjoy our life.

Tom Hodgkinson

Idleness for me is not a giving up on life but a spirited grabbing hold of it.

Tom Hodgkinson

Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects. We haven'tremained idle, twiddling our thumbs while you were off having a good time.

V.C. Andrews

We may regard certain days as free days. Free days are however fee days. We will pay later

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Boredom is the Devil's delight.

Lindsey Rietzsch

If your passion does not keep you sleepless, you can't be a good beginner. When passion itches, a great hand scratches... Wake up, it's your time to rise above idleness!

Israelmore Ayivor

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