There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
If idleness do not produce vice or malevolence, it commonly produces melancholy.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
A nation rushing hastily too and fro, busily employed in idleness.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
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
Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.
—Henry Ford (1863–1947) American Businessperson, Engineer
I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
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
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
It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where people don’t care to do anything, they shelter themselves under a permission that it cannot be done.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
Extreme busyness, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
What heart can think, or tongue express,
The harm that groweth of idleness?
—John Heywood
Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American Civil Liberties Lawyer
Worldings revelling in the fields
Of strenuous idleness.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
Prolonged idleness paralyzes initiative.
—Unknown
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65 CE) Roman Statesman, Latin Poet
Idleness is the beginning of all vices.
—Common Proverb
Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace.
—Hesiod (f.700 BCE) Greek Poet
One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention, and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied but to be read.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
The idle, who are neither wise for this world nor the next, are emphatically fools.
—John Tillotson
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
Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
Too much idleness, I have observed, fills up a man’s time much more completely, and leaves him less his own master, than any sort of employment whatsoever.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Men who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered when others gave up in despair, have practiced early in life the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose. As a result, they enjoy in later life the success so often erroneously attributed to good luck.
—Grenville Kleiser (1868–1935) Canadian Author
Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Idleness is the key of beggary, and the root of all evil.
—Charles Spurgeon (1834–92) English Baptist Preacher