Idleness Quotes

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.[L’oisiveté n’est fatale qu’aux médiocres.]

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

The lot of man is ceaseless labour, or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.

Labor keeps us free three of the great evils; tiresomeness, vice, and want.

Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.

Idleness, then, is so far from being the root of evil that it is rather the true good.[Lediggang er da saa langt fra at være Roden til det Onde, at den snarere er det sande Gode.]

Idleness is the parent of all psychology.[Müssiggang ist aller Psychologie Anfang.]

I found out some time back that it’s idleness breeds all our virtues, our most bearable qualities – contemplation, equableness, laziness, letting other people alone; good digestion mental and physical: the wisdom to concentrate on fleshly pleasures – eating and evacuating and fornication and sitting – in the sun – than which there is nothing better, nothing to match, nothing else in all this world but to live for the short time you are loaned breath, to be alive and know it.

Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise.[Надобно бы было включить вечную праздность в муки ада, а ее-то, напротив, поместили среди радостей рая.]

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