Quotes About Idleness

Being lazy does not mean that you do not create. In fact, lying around doing nothing is an important, nay crucial, part of the creative process. It is meaningless bustle that actually gets in the way of productivity. All we are really saying is, give peace a chance.

Huddled in folds they listened with wide eyes while the shepherds told of ravening wolves. With great gladness they exchanged their fleeces for security. Shorn and shivering, they had the happiness of seeing their protectors comfortable and warm. Through all the years, those who plowed divided with those who prayed. Wicked industry supported pious idleness, the hut gave to the cathedral, and frightened poverty gave even its rags to buy a robe for hypocrisy.

Then he recited to the still very groggy Sultan the old Arab proverb, 'He that sleeps one-third of the night has done as well as he that sleeps half the night, and he that sleeps all night will awaken an idiot.

A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

Despair and idleness are dangerous companions in any culture, and it was inevitable that the young would search for a hero who could voice their longing for change and provide a focus for their rage.

November, a dark, rainy Tuesday afternoon. This is my ideal time to be in a bookstore. The shortened light of the afternoon and the idleness and hush of the hour gather everything close, the shelves and the books and the few other customers who graze head-bent in the narrow aisles. There's a clerk at the counter who stares out the front window, taking a breather before the evening rush. I've come to find a book.

Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.

The faster you go, the idler you get.

Their Ethiop wives—sleek wineskins of black silk, Jellied and huge from drinking asses' milk Through years of tropical idleness, to pray For offspring (whom he ever sent away With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race Might breed and blacken the earth's comely face).

Un conto è non far niente. Un conto è non poter far niente-

Were there any idle people left? In the past, there had seemed to be plenty of those, but they had either stopped being idle or had managed to conceal their idleness behind a façade of being busy.

I am orderly out of spirit of idleness, to save myself the trouble of looking after things...

An idle life always produces varied inclinations.

For the love of God, do not be careless or tepid. For if tautness breaks the bow, idleness breaks the soul. Try to maintain a holy and discreet ardor in work and in the pursuit of learning as well as of virtue. With one as with the other, one energetic act is worth a thousand that are listless, and what a lazy man cannot accomplish in many years an energetic man usually achieves in a short time. —St. Ignatius Loyola, The Letters of St. Ignatius of Loyola, William

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

Sewing: A creative mess is better than tidy idleness.

Since I am wise, some people envy me, some think I'm idle, some the opposite, and some feel threatened. Yet I'm not all that wise.

Jelly-bean is the name throughout the undissolved Confederacy for one who spends his life conjugating the verb to idle in the first person singular- - I am idling, I have idled, I will idle

Why? But I want to know just why it's impossible for an American to be gracefully idle—his words gathered conviction—it astonishes me. It—it—I don't understand why people think that every young man ought to go down-town and work ten hours a day for the best twenty years of his life at dull, unimaginative work, certainly not altruistic work.

Fictions of the interlude, covering with color the apathy and idleness of our own disbelief.

Truly, the bench is a boon to idlers. Whoever first came up with the idea is a genius: free public resting places where you can take time out from the bustle and brouhaha of the city, and simply sit and watch and reflect.

Idle hands on a boat made for troubles all around.

There, according to Paul Theroux in The Kingdom by the Sea, virtually all social duties had been assumed by women, leaving the men with few responsibilities except manliness, idleness, religion, and violence.

What shall you do all your vacation?', asked Amy. I shall lie abed and do nothing, replied Meg.