Idleness

"La molesse est douce, et sa suite est cruelle."

"IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices."

"There is, however, nothing wanting to the idleness of a philosopher but a better name, and that meditation, conversation, and reading should be called “work.”"

"For idleness is an appendix to nobility."

"Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre."

"An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands."

"How various his employments whom the world Calls idle; and who justly in return Esteems that busy world an idler too!"

"Thus idly busy rolls their world away."

"You must generate energy in order to exist. Everyone must always be working hard. You should never cultivate inaction here. There is no use to be dead weight to the Earth. Whatever wars were fought during the past centuries were only to relieve the world of the dead weight of idleness."

"What heart can think, or tongue express, The harm that groweth of idleness?"

"God loves an idle rainbow, No less than laboring seas."

"I live an idle burden to the ground."

"On n’est pas inoccupé parce qu’on est absorbé. Il y a le labeur visible et le labeur invisible."

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

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time."

"The worst idleness is that of the heart. Think of the condition and prospects of a voiceless, thankless, prayerless heart."

"Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there, Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair, And heard thy everlasting yawn confess The Pains and Penalties of Idleness."

"But not enough has been thought about idleness. It is the foundation of all happiness and the end of all philosophy."

"I rather would entreat thy company, To see the wonders of the world abroad Than living, dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness."

"Leisure is permissible, we understand, because it costs money; idleness is not, because it doesn’t. Leisure is focused; whatever thinking it requires is absorbed by a certain task: sinking that putt, making that cast, watching that flat-screen TV. Idleness is unconstrained, anarchic. Leisure—particularly if it involves some kind of high-priced technology—is as American as a Fourth of July barbecue. Idleness, on the other hand, has a bad attitude. It doesn’t shave; it’s not a member of the team; it doesn’t play well with others. It thinks too much, as my high school coach used to say. So it has to be ostracized."

"Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of lèse-respectability, to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough"

"Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself."

"Utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad famam protulerat."

"Their only labour was to kill the time; And labour dire it is, and weary woe, They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go, Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow."

"To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse."

"No, the enjoyment of an idle life doesn't cost any money. The capacity for true enjoyment of idleness is lost in the moneyed class and can be found only among people who have a supreme contempt for wealth. It must come from an inner richness of the soul in a man who loves the simple ways of life and who is somewhat impatient with the business of making money."

"Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless."

"Diligenter per vacuitatem suam."

"Strenua nos exercet inertia."

"Vitanda est improba syren—desidia."

"Variam semper dant otia mentem."

"The frivolous work of polished idleness."

"Cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus Ut capiant vitium ni moveantur aquæ."

"Difficultas patrocinia præteximus segnitiæ."

"Blandoque veneno Desidiæ virtus paullatim evicta senescit."

"L'indolence est le sommeil des esprits."

"There is no remedy for time misspent; No healing for the waste of idleness, Whose very languor is a punishment Heavier than active souls can feel or guess."

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

"'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I heard him complain: "You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again"; As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed, Turns his sides, and his shoulders and his heavy head."

"But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?"

"Worldlings revelling in the fields Of strenuous idleness."