Top 699 Idle Quotes & Sayings

One monster there is in the world, the idle man.

To the extent that sacrifices need to be made, shouldn't the people who've made out like bandits this past generation be first in line? The problem with getting out of the slump is that we need to spend more. It's not that somebody needs to spend less. We have idle workers who have the skills and the willingness to work. We have idle factories. Dealing with this is not about saying somebody needs to suffer. It's saying that we need to be prepared to open the taps.

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

It is idle to await unanimity.

If, in looking at the lives of princes, courtiers, men of rank and fashion, we must perforce depict them as idle, profligate, and criminal, we must make allowances for the rich men's failings, and recollect that we, too, were very likely indolent and voluptuous, had we no motive for work, a mortal's natural taste for pleasure, and the daily temptation of a large income. What could a great peer, with a great castle and park, and a great fortune, do but be splendid and idle?

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

The idle brain is the devil's playground.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

An idle head is a boxe for the winde.

[There] is no class so dangerous as the idle educated.

Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.

Just enough sense to stick with something-a chore, task, project, until its completed pays off much better than idle intelligence, even if idle intelligence be of genius caliber.

The idle man is the devil's cushion.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

Idle time is the devil's play.

Love does not stay idle.

Do not sit idle, for indeed death is seeking you

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it on riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?

The idle mind knows not what it wants.

You find you have a lot of friends when you are rich and idle.

History's political and economic power structures have always abhorred 'idle people' as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky.

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.

When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.

When the idle poor, Become the idle rich, You'll never know, Just who is who, Or who is which.

Arguments derived from probabilities are idle.

No "natural" resource is more precious and to be used more wisely than time. These mortal moments matter more than we know. There are no idle hours; there are only idle people. In true righteousness there is serenity, but there is an array of reminders that the "sacred present" is packed with possibilities which are slipping by us, which are going away from us each moment.

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

Paradoxically, to be truly idle, you also have to be efficient.

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.

I'm not good when idle.

I am capable of being idle.

I'm not very happy idle.

Be not solitary, be not idle

Love is the business of the idle, but the idleness of the busy.

I can't sit idle, as I love to work.

That man is idle who can do something better.

An Idle youth, a needy Age.

It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.

It is better to be idle than employed in ill.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

These are questions for action, not speculation, which is idle.

I don't understand being idle; I don't have an idle setting. I probably should develop one.

No idle word should be uttered. I understand a word to be idle when it serves no good purpose, either for myself or for another, and was not intended to do so.

Never let the brain idle. ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.’ And the devil’s name is Alzheimer’s.

I don't like idle time.

Busy opinion is an idle fool.

I live an idle burden to the ground.

Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you damned?

Be ashamed to catch yourself idle.

The idle always have a mind to do something.

A truce to idle phrases!

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary be not idle.

I am an idle devil. But at least I work at it.

There are idle spots on every farm, and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is; keep cow, plow, and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen.

although it has been said that idle hands are the devil's workshop, when it comes to teenagers, both idle and active hands are the devil's workshop.

An idle life and a holy heart is a contradiction.

Old Flossie settle down on the other side of What-the-Dickens and dragged some handiwork out of a sack. She armed herself with two thorns shaped into knitting needles. A wodge of curlicued metallic scrubbing pad supplied the threat. 'I knit handcuffs as a hobby,' explained Old Flossie happily, and set to work. 'Idle hands get up to no good, so I like to be prepared in case I meet up with any idle hands.

Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.