Quotes About Idleness

Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!

Being by his faith replaced afresh in paradise and created anew, he (the believer)does not need works for his justification, but that he may not be idle, but that he may exercise his own body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole object of pleasing God.

It is not fitting that one man should live in idleness on another's labor, or be rich and live comfortably at the cost of another's hardship

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do. The fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

An idle brain is the Devil's workshop, they say. It is an absurdly incongruous statement. If the Devil is at work in a rain it certainly is not idle.

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Don't feel guilty about being idle. More harm is probably done to the world through work than idleness. But perfect your idleness. Make it mindful.

Two goals in a Maoist economy are to keep people working whether their job is necessary or not (idleness is the bourgeoisie's workshop) and to make sure everyone is keeping an eye on everyone else.

Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care. But

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.

Our whole lives, Jefferies said, are wasted traveling in endless small circles; we are all "chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground." The richest person, Jefferies believed, is the one who works least. "Idleness," he wrote, "is a great good." For Jefferies, like

What was he doing? Reading a little, maybe. We can't even be sure of this. In fact, his biographers have to admit they don't know much at all, and that, judging from appearances - at least between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three - he did absolutely nothing.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness its opposite never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.

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

No, yo no soy un vago! Mi imaginación no descansa. Los vagos son ellos, los que dicen que trabajan y no hacen sino aturdirse y ahogar el pensamiento.

I am fooling around not doing anything, which probably means that this is a creative period, although of course you don't know until afterward. I think that it is very important to be idle. I mean, they always say that Shakespeare was idle between plays. I am not comparing myself to Shakespeare, but people who keep themselves busy all of the time are generally not creative. So I am not ashamed of being idle.

In other words, with nothing to do, the mind is unable to prevent negative thoughts from elbowing their way to center stage.

When idleness is forced on someone without a handsome income, it just produces a severe drop in self-esteem, and general listlessness. As John Hay-worth, a psychologist at the University of Manchester, has shown, young men out of work, even when paid relatively generous unemployment compensation, have a very hard time finding satisfaction in their lives.

time-wasting dominoes

Be industrious, let thine eyes be open, lest you become a beggar, for the man that is idle cometh not to honor.

Spirituality does not encourage idleness, but you must be more practical than those who are not spiritual.

Like every educated Englishman, Benjamin Franklin was obsessed with idleness. In his Poor Richard's Almanack of 1741, he offered familiar advice that echoed the talk of Hakluyt, Winthrop, and Byrd: "Up sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough." There was utterly nothing new in his pitch for hard work as the way to wealth.1