Thee too, my Paridel! she mark’d thee there,
Stretch’d on the rack of a too easy chair,
And heard thy everlasting yarn confess
The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
The idle, who are neither wise for this world nor the next, are emphatically fools.
—John Tillotson
There is nothing worse than an idle hour, with no occupation offering. People who have many such hours are simply animals waiting docilely for death. We all come to that state soon or late. It is the curse of senility.
—H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) American Journalist, Literary Critic
He doth all things with sadness and with peevishness, slackness and excusation, with idleness and without good will.
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English Poet, Philosopher, Diplomat, Bureaucrat
Rather do what is nothing to the purpose than be idle, that the devil may find thee doing.—The bird that sits is easily shot when the fliers escape the fowler.—Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and is the self-made sepulcher of a living man.
—Francis Quarles (1592–1644) English Religious Poet
‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief—which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.
—George Borrow (1803–81) English Writer, Traveler
Idleness ruins the constitution
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
An idler is a watch that wants both hands; As useless if it goes as when it stands.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
Thus idly busy rolls their world away
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.
—Unknown
In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools’ pleasure
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65 CE) Roman Statesman, Latin Poet
A nation rushing hastily too and fro, busily employed in idleness.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.
—E. V. Lucas (1868–1938) English Author, Historian
Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Troubles spring from idleness, and grievous toils from needless ease: many without labor would live by their own wits only, but they break for want of stock.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Great examples to virtue, or to vice, are not so productive of imitation as might at first sight be supposed. There are hundreds that want energy, for one that wants ambition; and sloth has prevented as many vices in some minds as virtue in others. Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss, the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is, engendered in idleness, but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
I live an idle burden to the ground.
—Homer (751–651 BCE) Ancient Greek Poet
Better sit idle than work for nought.
—Scottish Proverb
So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation.
—Jeremy Taylor
Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.
—English Proverb
You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist
Were’t not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honored love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy.—He that rises late must trot all day, and hall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
How sweet and sacred idleness is!
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Idleness among children, as among men, is the root of all evil, and leads to no other evil more certain than ill temper.
—Hannah More
For the barbarians were not only at our gates but within our skins. We were our own wooden horses, each one of us full of our own doom. ….these fanatics or those, or crazies or yours; but the explosions burst out of our very own bodies. We were both the bombers and the bombs. The explosions were our own evil – no need to look for foriegn explanations, though there was and is evil beyond our frontiers as well as within. We have chopped away our own legs, we engineered our own fall. And now we can only weep, at the last, for what we were too enfeebled, too corrupt, too little, too contemptable to defend.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Blessed is the man that has found his work. One monster there is in the world, the idle man.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches; and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
What heart can think, or tongue express,
The harm that groweth of idleness?
—John Heywood
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
—Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Theologian
As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
When the woman slumbers, the workbasket falls to the ground.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is efficiently destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
‘Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain, you have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English Hymn writer
Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.
—Charles Spurgeon (1834–92) English Baptist Preacher
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat