Top 341 Idleness Quotes & Sayings

In idleness there is a perpetual despair.

Trouble Springs From Idleness.

Idleness is the stupidity of the body, and stupidity is the idleness of the mind.

Writing is busy idleness.

In effort Happiness idleness life pleasure superstition support trouble work The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be.

It is idleness that is the curse of man - not labour. Idleness eats the heart out of men as of nations, and consumes them as rust does iron.

I wonder at the idleness of tears.

Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended.... Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored.

Busy idleness urges us on.

Idleness is sweet, and its consequences are cruel.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Love is born of idleness and, once born, by idleness is fostered.

Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.

Idleness or boredom has no place in the life of a Christian.

How sweet and sacred idleness is!

Now the code of life of the High Middle Ages said something entirely opposite to this: that it was precisely lack of leisure, an inability to be at leisure, that went together with idleness; that the restlessness of work-for-work's sake arose from nothing other than idleness. There is a curious connection in the fact that the restlessness of a self-destructive work-fanatacism should take its rise from the absence of a will to accomplish something.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

Idleness is the great plague of India.

Idleness breeds our better virtues.

When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

Idleness is the enemy of the soul.

I'm not a fan of idleness, except in small doses.

The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.

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.

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves

Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.

Grief is a species of idleness.

Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor.

Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food--and a spaniel, that prefers even punishment from one hand to caresses from another. But it is in love as in war, we are often more indebted for our success to the weakness of the defence than to the energy of the attack; for mere idleness has ruined more women than passion; vanity more than idleness, and credulity more than either.

Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.

Upon this subject, the habits of our whole species fall into three great classes--useful labour, useless labour and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labour rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of it's just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.

Idleness is an appendix to nobility.

Sluggish idleness--the nurse of sin.

Idleness ruins the constitution

Idleness is the key of beggary.

Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.

Communism is the flower of idleness.

He lacks much who has no aptitude for idleness.

Gossip, like ennui, is born of idleness.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

An army is strengthened by labor and enervated by idleness.

Believe me, I do not like idleness but work.

Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all virtues

Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

Idleness is a constant sin, and labor is a duty. Idleness is the devil's home for temptation and for unprofitable, distracting musings; while labor profit others and ourselves.

Idleness is the heaviest of all oppressions.

Fear is nothing but idleness of the will.

Without execution, thinking is mere idleness.

War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.

Idleness only leads to bad deeds

Idleness is the sepulchre of a living man.

Idleness is an enemy of the soul.

Idleness induces caprice.

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

Idleness is righteous if it is comfortable. Uncomfortable idleness is sin & sinful waste.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

Idleness is paralysis.

Idleness is hells fishhook for catching souls.