Quotes on Idleness

No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

IDLENESS, n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.

Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Reading in bed is a self-centered act, immobile, free from ordinary social conventions, invisible to the world, and one that, because it takes place between the sheets, in the realm of lust and sinful idleness, has something of the thrill of things forbidden.

I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst. Death isn't just an idea.

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

Trouble springs from idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease.