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.
Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on.
Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench.
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.
What other people do shouldn't affect you - we do things because of the kind of person we each want to be
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