If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The idle, who are neither wise for this world nor the next, are emphatically fools.
—John Tillotson
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
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
Prolonged idleness paralyzes initiative.
—Unknown
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
Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80) French Writer
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
There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
What heart can think, or tongue express,
The harm that groweth of idleness?
—John Heywood
Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.
—Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English Hymn 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
The hardest work is to go idle.
—Yiddish Proverb
Idleness is the only refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
—Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Polymath, Painter, Sculptor, Architect
An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.
—English Proverb
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
The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good.
—Hannah More
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
Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness—the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.
—George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish Novelist, Lecturer, Poet
It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts.
—Sidney Madwed (1926–2013) American Poet, Author
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, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
—Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English Humorous Writer, Novelist, Playwright
If you are idle, you are on the road to ruin; and there are few stopping-places upon it. It is rather a precipice than a road.
—Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) American Clergyman, Writer
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
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
Better sit idle than work for nought.
—Scottish Proverb
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness with others.
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902) British Victorian Novelist, Essayist, Critic
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