A Quote by Samuel Johnson
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
Related Quotes
Imagination without initiative would more properly be called idle daydreaming.
And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to welfare--is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.
There is no more self-contradictory concept than that of idle thoughts. What gives rise to the perception of a whole world can hardly be called idle. Every thought we have either contributes to truth or to illusion.
Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.
Man is a machine which reacts blindly to external forces and, this being so, he has no will, and very little control of himself, if any at all. What we have to study, therefore, is not psychology-for that applies only to a developed man-but mechanics. Man is not only a machine but a machine which works very much below the standard it would be capable of maintaining if it were working properly.
I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.
They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.
The only substance properly so called is the soul.
Talking things over has its place in an organization [but] so-called conferences are being grossly overdone. One executive stops at the desk of another to tell him, perhaps, about the wonderful score he made at golf on Saturday afternoon. This chin-chin immediately becomes a conference, and neither the office boy nor the telephone operator must disturb either gentleman. More idle gossip is indulged in at many business conferences these days than an old wives' sewing circle would be guilty of.
Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
Maybe. Anyway, some men get what they want. No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all.
Being called gay is worse than transgender. I remember when I started fighting way back in 1999 for hijas' rights, and I said the state doesn't have the right to use my gender to club me into "gay." If I say I am not a man then who are you to question it? Being called gay or a man really upsets me.
I think it must be awful not to work. My only point in being idle is to rest so that I can work more... I'm only unhappy when I'm not working.
Man prides himself on being the only animal who can modify his nature, yet when he chooses to do so he is called a phony.
In our profession someone can be very brilliant and acquire total technical mastery. Yet in the last resort, the only thing that really counts is his quality as a human being. For music is created by Man for Man. And if someone sees nothing more than notes in it, this can perhaps be very interesting, but it cannot enrich him. And music should exist for one purpose only; to enrich Man and give him something he has lost in most respects.
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
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