Idleness Quotes - page 5

Idleness does drive me crazy, but I'd rather read or write than do anything just to work. A kind of respect has been instilled in me for acting: I love it too much to ever have a bad relationship with it. (Karen Allen)
It is rather hard to be accused of shiftlessness and idleness when the accuser closes the avenue of labour and industrial pursuits to us. View quote
George H. White
I was never comfortable with the risk of climbing in the Himalayas, or the amount of time in idleness that is involved in the Everest expedition. View quote
Steve Fossett
It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt. View quote
Bill Clinton
It is a common myth that idlers are incapable of working. The term "idler” is used as a pejorative by the forces of dullness and authority as they like the idea that idleness equates to evil, and they want society at large to despise the idler. The non-idler cannot understand the paradox of the working idler. He likes things to be simple: you are either working, or not working. View quote
Tom Hodgkinson
In dealing with a race composed of cannibals for thousands of years, it is necessary to use methods which will best shape their idleness, and make them realize the sanctity of work. View quote
Leopold II of Belgium
Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support. View quote
Robert Louis Stevenson
Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support. View quote
Robert Louis Stevenson
These scenes, which the Morning Chronicle is bringing home to all minds of men,-thanks to it for a service such as Newspapers have seldom done,-ought to excite unspeakable reflections in every mind. Thirty thousand outcast Needlewomen working themselves swiftly to death; three million Paupers rotting in forced idleness, helping said Needlewomen to die: these are but items in the sad ledger of despair. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works in idleness alone there is perpetual despair. View quote
Thomas Carlyle
Every man must patiently bide his time. He must wait not in listless idleness but in constant, steady, cheerful endeavors, always willing and fulfilling and accomplishing his task, that when the occasion comes he may be equal to the occasion. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
Idleness ere now has ruined both kings and wealthy cities. View quote
Catullus
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time much more completely, and leaves him less his own master, than any other sort of employment whatsoever. View quote
Edmund Burke
Grief is a species of idleness. View quote
Samuel Johnson
Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. . . . He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic. View quote
Samuel Johnson
Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed. View quote
Samuel Johnson
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business. View quote
Samuel Johnson
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read. View quote
Samuel Johnson
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. View quote
Sir Aubrey de Vere, 2nd Baronet
IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
Idleness, theft, and viciousness dishonor your mother who in pain bore you. (Mark Rosenfelder)
Of all our faults, the one that we excuse most easily is idleness. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach. View quote
Oscar Wilde
The condition of perfection is idleness the aim of perfection is youth. View quote
Oscar Wilde
It wounds a man less to confess that he has failed in any pursuit through idleness, neglect, the love of pleasure, etc., etc., which are his own faults, than through incapacity and unfitness, which are the faults of his nature. View quote
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne