A Quote by Thomas Jefferson

We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote Topics

Away Been Could Could Have Been Doing Doing Nothing Employed Gives Great Having Home Importantly Lounging Me My Time Nothing Our Our Time Passing Regret Time Time Away

Quote Author

Thomas Jefferson
American - President
April 13, 1743 - July 4, 1826

I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.

Philip Larkin

Even if nothing worse than wasted mental effort could be laid to the charge of theology, that alone ought to be sufficient to banish it from the earth ... What a vast amount of labour and learning has been expended, as uselessly as emptying shallow puddles into sieves! How much intellect has been employed mousing after texts, to sustain preconceived doctrines!

Lydia M. Child

We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.

Seneca the Younger

I've always been keenly aware of the passing of time. I've always thought that I was old. Even when I was twelve, I thought it was awful to be thirty. I felt that something was lost. At the same time, I was aware of what I could gain, and certain periods of my life have taught me a great deal. But, in spite of everything, I've always been haunted by the passing of time and by the fact that death keeps closing in on us.

Simone de Beauvoir

Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.

Martin Heidegger

I have great emotion every time I go on stage. Nothing in life gives me the same satisfaction that my profession gives me.

Jose Carreras

Having a son had an immediate impact on me, that's when I started taking my business, my time and having something to show for myself seriously. My time has to be compensated. People may call me materialistic or whatever but if I spend 20 hours away from my son, if I don't bring anything home, then what was I doing with my time? It's simple, it's my son and then everything else.

Dom Kennedy

There's nothing I hate more than nothing. Nothing keeps me up at night. I toss and turn over nothing. Nothing could cause a great big fight.

Edie Brickell

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

Samuel Beckett

Nothing seems real anymore. Even the flames from the fire seem to beckon to me, drawing me into some great past life buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, if only I could find the key..if only..if only. Ever since my illness, my condition, I've been trying to find some logical way of passing my time, of justifying a means to an end.

Ian Curtis

Remember that the past fifty years has been the age of the Big Bang cosmology. We have learnt to see all reality as a slow-motion explosion, as pouring itself out and passing away, as dissemination. We live in a postmodern epoch in which there is nothing absolute, nothing permanent and nothing substantial.

Don Cupitt

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

Zhuangzi

Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been.

Richard Matheson

My biggest regret is by far doing the Travel Channel show, 'Bert the Adventurer.' I spent seven years away from my family. I don't regret the job or working for the channel; I regret being away from home.