Idleness Quotes · Page 11

In work there is no shame; shame is in the idleness.

— Hesiod

“Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.”

— Philip Dormer Stanhope

What's worse: to be idle while someone dies, or to be exiled and empty-handed?

— Veronica Roth

Idle minds are the devil's research-and-development department.

— Robert Stacy McCain

A thought falls like a ripe fruit from the tree of idleness.

— Natalie Clifford Barney

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man.

— J. G. Holland

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.

— Bill Watterson

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property.

— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail To find some reason why the poor deserve Their miseries.

— Robert Southey

Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill…

— Hannah More

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak,…

— John Ruskin

Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of…

— Mark Twain

“His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.”

— Iain Pears

Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man's time more completely and leaves him less his own master, than any…

— Edmund Burke

It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt.

— William J. Clinton

the wasting of time is the most personal, most private, most intimate form of conversation with oneself, as well as with another.

— Mary Ruefle

Give me the boy who rouses when he is praised, who profits when he is encouraged and who cries when he is…

— Quintilian

“Here’s Kreider’s explanation: Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as…

— Cal Newport

Do not let idleness set in, not even for a second, as seconds will lead to minute, minutes will lead to hour,…

— Nghi Lam

The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps…

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing…

— Thomas Jefferson

I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't…

— Saul Bellow

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is…

— Rose Macaulay

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless.…

— Stephen Spender

“In consequence, when the pleasures have been removed which busy people derive from their actual activities, the mind cannot endure the house,…

— Seneca

“Reality reveals itself in man's idleness, and so it is often his greatest threat.”

— VD

He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.

— Samuel Johnson

Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

— Julie Burchill

Fear is nothing but idleness of the will...

— Eliphas Levi

It is, we believe, Idle to hope that the simple stirrup-pump Can extinguish hell.

— Henry Reed

Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.

— Plato

People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.

— Anonymous

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

— Oscar Wilde

Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.

— Floyd Dell

“Joblessness does not necessarily mean idleness”

— Sunday Adelaja

For too many of us ease is far more soul-destroying than trouble.

— Alice Foote MacDougall

As brightness is to rustiness, so labor excelleth idleness.

— Thales

Idleness is hells fishhook for catching souls.

— Ignatius of Loyola

Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.

— William Gilmore Simms

Pride, anger, gluttony, and idleness are sometimes conquered, but the conversion of a malicious and envious mind is a kind of miracle.

— Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont