Idleness Quotes

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds. (Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield)
I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble. View quote
Agatha Christie
Idleness and laziness not only breed ignorance, but they are also the cause of illness. View quote
Avicenna
Smokers, male and female, inject and excuse idleness in their lives every time they light a cigarette. View quote
Colette
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. View quote
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury
Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace. View quote
Hesiod
Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. View quote
William Wordsworth
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness who read for pastime but not to kill time who love books, but do not live by books. View quote
Robertson Davies
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good. View quote
Søren Kierkegaard
Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues. View quote
Franz Kafka
It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without becoming soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. (Edward Gibbon)
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. View quote
Jerome K. Jerome
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. View quote
Virginia Woolf
Research! Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value. View quote
Benjamin Jowett
Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel. View quote
John Quincy Adams
The haggardness of poverty is everywhere seen contrasted with the sleekness of wealth, the exhorted labour of some compensating for the idleness of others, wretched hovels by the side of stately colonnades, the rags of indigence blended with the ensigns of opulence; in a word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the most urgent wants. View quote
Jean-Baptiste Say
War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune. View quote
Walter Raleigh
Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour. View quote
Emil Cioran
Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long. View quote
Cesare Pavese
Idleness is an appendix to nobility. View quote
Robert Burton
The greatest defect of common education is, that we are in the habit of putting pleasure all on one side, and weariness on the other; all weariness in study, all pleasure in idleness. (François Fénelon)
Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness; no laziness; no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. View quote
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
The frivolous work of polished idleness. View quote
James Mackintosh
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. View quote
Albert Camus
We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost. View quote
Napoleon Bonaparte