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IDLENESS
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[ Also see Action Activity Business Delay Ease Employment Ennui Forgetfulness Inaction Inactivity Indifference Indolence Laziness Leisure Neglect Occupations Rest Retirement Sloth Solitude Study Time Work ]

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention; and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches; and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

To be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

To do nothing is in every man's power.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature")

Gloomy calm of idle vacancy.
      - Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) ("The Great Cham of Literature"),
        Boswell's Life of Johnson

I was raised to feel that doing nothing was a sin. I had to learn to do nothing.
      - Jenny Joseph, in the London "Observer"

How sweet and sacred idleness is!
      - Walter Savage Landor

Idleness is more an infirmity of the mind than of the body.
      - Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

An idle life always produces varied inclinations.
  [Lat., Variam semper dant otia mentem.]
      - Lucanus (Marcus Annaeus Lucan), Pharsalia
         (IV, 704)

Disciplined inaction.
      - Sir James Mackintosh

The frivolous work of polished idleness.
      - Sir James Mackintosh,
        Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy--Remarks on Thomas Brown

In such a world as ours the idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve; and the wealth which breeds idleness, of which the English peerage is an example, and of which we are beginning to abound in specimens in this country, is only a sort of human oyster bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worms' banquet.
      - Horace Mann

Well, we can't stand around here doing nothing, people will think we're workmen.
      - Spike Milligan

Every hour of lost time is a chance of future misfortune.
      - Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I)

Evil thoughts intrude in an unemployed mind, as naturally as worms are generated in a stagnant pool.
  [Lat., Sicut in stagno generantur vermes, sic et otioso malae cogitationes.]
      - Old Latin Saying, possibly by Seneca

Thou seest how sloth wastes the sluggish body, as water is corrupted unless it moves.
  [Lat., Cernis ut ignavum corrumpant otia corpus
    Ut capiant vitium ni moveantur aquae.]
      - Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso),
        Epistoloe Ex Ponto (I, 5, 5)

The bees can abide no drones amongst them; but as soon as they begin to be idle, they kill them.
      - Plato (originally Aristocles}

A poor idle man cannot be an honest man.
      - Achille Poincelot

Enjoyment stops where indolence begins.
      - Robert Pollok

Thee too, my Paridel! she mark'd thee there,
  Stretch'd on the rack of a too easy chair,
    And heard thy everlasting yarn confess
      The Pains and Penalties of Idleness.
      - Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
         (bk. IV, l. 341)

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 fliers scape the fowler. Idleness is the Dead Sea that swallows all the virtues, and the self-made sepulchre of a living man.
      - Francis Quarles

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
  [Lat., Difficultas patrocinia praeteximus segnitiae.]
      - Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus),
        De Institutione Oratoria (I, 12)

Idleness is many, gathered miseries in one name.
      - Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (Johann Paul Richter) (used ps. Jean Paul)

Idleness is the stupidity of the body; and stupidity the idleness of the mind.
      - Johann Gottfried Seume


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