Quotes on Idleness

We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question is whether A has done as well as he could.

Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

Believe me, I do not like idleness but work.

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged.

And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness!

A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

The Book of Proverbs deals very hard blows against sluggards, and Christian ministers do well frequently to denounce the great sin of idleness, which is the mother of a huge family of sins.

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind.

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.

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

Grief is a species of idleness.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.