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
How sweet and sacred idleness is!
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
That man is idle who can do something better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
Thus idly busy rolls their world away
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
—Samuel Butler
Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with idlers, and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal rambles, one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their eyes with a microscope; another exhibits the dust of of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend rings to a load stone, and find that what they did yesterday, they can do again today.—Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable.—There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union, and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled: they mingle them, and produce the effect expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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
The hardest work is to go idle
—Yiddish Proverb
Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
Idleness ruins the constitution
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (c.43 BCE–c.18 CE) Roman Poet
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
He that is doing nothing is seldom in need of helpers.
—Common Proverb
Few women and fewer men have enough character to be idle.
—E. V. Lucas (1868–1938) English Author, Historian
As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
I live an idle burden to the ground.
—Homer (751–651 BCE) Ancient Greek Poet
An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65 CE) Roman Statesman, Latin Poet
He is not only idle who does nothing, but he is idle who might be better employed.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
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
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
Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.
—John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) Sixth President of the USA
Busy idleness urges us on
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
Idleness is the gate of all harms.—An idle man is like a house that hath no walls; the devils may enter on every side.
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400) English Poet, Philosopher, Diplomat, Bureaucrat