To an active mind, indolence is more painful than labor.
Interpretation
An active mind finds idleness more distressing than being busy.
This quote suggests that for individuals who have a propensity for thinking and engaging in mental activities, being idle and unproductive can be more uncomfortable than the effort of hard work or labor. It highlights the idea that mental engagement is essential for fulfillment, and inactivity can lead to a sense of unease or dissatisfaction.
In practice
This quote would be perfect in a motivational speech aimed at students to encourage them to stay engaged with their studies.
It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.
And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
The first and indispensable requisite of happiness is a clear conscience.
In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome.
Many a sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God than that God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.
If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
She likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes; And while she laughs at them, forgets She is the thing that she despises.
The Beauty of the Mountain is hidden for all those who try to discover it from the top, supposing that, one way or an other, one can reach this place directly. The Beauty of the Mountain reveals only to those who climbed it.
I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.
I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.