Quotes About Idleness

When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

I'm very, very lazy. I love to sit in a chair and look out the window and do nothing.

Never miss an opportunity to do nothing

En el mundo burgués en vías de constitución, el vicio mayor, el pecado por excelencia, no es ya el orgullo o la avidez, como en el mundo medieval, sino la ociosidad.

Vadiação é bom costume.

Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.

Never has any country given its people so many toys to play with or sent such highly gifted individuals to the remotest corners of idleness, as close as possible to the frontiers of pain.

A busy monk is besieged by a single devil but an idle one is destroyed by spirits innumerable.

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.

To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform.

Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.

Huye de la ciudad... Pobres maldades, misérrimas virtudes y quehaceres de chulos aburridos, y ruindades de ociosos mercaderes.

One who enjoys own luxurious lifestyle by being idle but bumptiously loves to preach others about the importance of hard work through lengthy, empty speech publicly, is the most ideal person to be in politics.

People who have got nothing to do anything valuable in life have often most to talk about the politics and politicians amongst themselves.

Danglard, vous croyez toujours que je ne fous rien sous prétexte que je ne fous rien.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink.

Remember that one day of your idleness kills 12,000 souls ... there is only one thing that may be said in your exoneration-that you do not know the truth. This is possible, The villain does his job so shrewdly that only a few guess the truth. We have told you several times. Is it possible that you believe our murderers more than you believe us?

How sweet it is to do nothing, and afterwards to rest!

I have taken so kindly to idleness that I can't tear myself away from it. So either I amuse myself with books, of which I have a good stock at Antium, or I count the waves - the weather is unsuitable for mackerel fishing... And my sole form of political activity is to hate the rascals, and even that I do without anger.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.

The more we think we are sophisticated sometimes the sillier we get—and certainly the more idle people there are with nothing to fill their minds except making moral rules for everyone else, the more hypocrisy there is as to who keeps them and who doesn't.

The working classes were often the same, give them a chance to idle and they'd take it with both hands. Still, couldn't blame them entirely. Their life was gray enough. He would have done the same.